Chantal Boucher, psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Windsor.
By Lindsay Charlton
What does it mean to have closure? How can closure be measured?
It is something mentioned often in popular media, the idea of getting closure. Sitcom fans might remember the scene from Friends when Rachel leaves a message for Ross letting him know she’s over him, saying, “Now that, my friend, is what we call closure.”
It’s a term we hear everywhere, but what it really means — and how to measure it — isn’t as clear.
Chantal Boucher, psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Windsor, says unresolved experiences, such as the breakdown of a relationship, the loss of a loved one, the onset of a serious health condition, or other such events, are fundamental to the human experience.
“Most know what it feels like to have a broken heart, to lose someone or something special, to be treated unfairly without understanding why, to regret some action or inaction, to cope with a health condition, or to try to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem,” said Dr. Boucher.
Having and wanting to “close” these events is universal and can manifest as intrusive or unwanted thoughts and feelings when left unresolved.
“The desire for closure is fundamental to the human experience. But we really don't know much about it, in large part because we didn't have a good way to measure it,” Boucher said.
As much as “getting closure” is discussed, Boucher says it’s a construct that remains poorly understood in the scientific literature, with concepts of closure varying widely across studies. This lack of clarity and the absence of reliable measurement tools motivated her to develop the Closure and Resolution Scale (CRS), an easy-to-administer, reliable and theory-informed tool for assessing people’s perceived sense of closure around unresolved experiences.
“Our goal was to operationalize this construct in a way that could advance both basic research — understanding how memory, emotion, and well-being interact — and clinical work, by giving therapists and researchers a reliable way to track how people progress toward resolution,” she explained.
The CRS looks at six key areas of event resolution: finality, understanding, felt distance, emotional relief, mental release, and behavioural deactivation.
“I started by immersing myself in the literature, reading everything I could find on psychological closure and related concepts,” Boucher explained of her process.
“What stood out to me across this literature was that closure seems to be a multifaceted experience: it’s not just a matter of thinking differently about an event, but also about how we feel and how we behave moving forward.”
The 34-item self-report tool was then developed through several studies and tested with participants from both undergraduate and large North American samples, showing that the scale is a valid, reliable, and effective means of understanding how people perceive their own closure and resolution.
Boucher said she defines closure as a mental segmentation of an experience in subjective space and time.
“It’s a process and a state whereby a person can say, ‘This thing is over. It’s done. I feel better about it. I’m content with the way things worked out. It has meaning. It feels finished. It feels resolved. I don’t feel like I need to do anything more to put it to rest.’ It doesn’t take up my mental space — I’m not preoccupied with it anymore. It’s a state where people feel a sense of resolution, cognitively, emotionally, and behaviourally,” she said.
Theoretically, closure is linked to many positive outcomes. Research shows it helps resolve experiences that trouble us and is considered an adaptive response that can lead to a host of physical and mental health benefits.
“It can lead to a host of physical and mental health benefits to be able to say that these difficult experiences have been resolved,” Boucher said. “So, it’s important to support people in their process toward achieving resolution in various contexts.”
She continues to work on research in this area with her team, using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods to gain insight into the experience of closure, lack thereof, and individual experiences, and what people believe hinders and helps them achieve closure.
“I’ve come to appreciate just how complex and idiosyncratic the process of attaining closure can be. Even though we now have a tool to assess closure as a state, not all experiences are ‘closable’ in the way people might hope,” she said. “So, closure on the potentially unclosable or slow-to-close represents an intriguing layer to consider, particularly in psychotherapy.”
“For some events, the goal may need to shift toward adaptive acceptance or meaning-making rather than absolute closure. Recognizing this complexity is, I think, as important as having a way to measure closure itself.”