Are you sad when a favorite TV show ends? You are not alone.

When the Australian soap opera “Neighbours” was canceled in 2022, it marked the end of a cultural institution that had operated for 37 years. The homely setting in a fictional suburb and the characters fans had come to love were suddenly gone.

It was a loss that Adam Gerace, a senior lecturer in psychology at Central Queensland University in Australia, wanted to know more about. So he asked almost 1,300 Australians how they felt about the show’s end.

“Fans were talking about the series finale like they were losing a friend,” he said.

Their reactions represented genuine experiences of grief and loss, according to a study to study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, of which Gerace is the author.

Gerace created an online survey that asked fans whether they had experienced grief-related emotions, such as anger or sadness, shortly after the final episode aired in 2022. (The show was revived in 2023 after the survey closed.)

It also assessed whether people were able to accept that the series was ending, felt any closure about the show going off the air, or were grateful for having been able to watch the show for so long.

Overall, Gerace said, people were angry about the series’ cancellation and had a hard time accepting it.

“They didn’t feel closure,” he said. “But they felt extremely grateful for what the show gave them. It gave them character connections, exposure to different lifestyles, and also connected them with other fans.”

The survey also measured fans’ distress over no longer watching their favorite character on screen – what the researchers called “parasocial separation.” Parasocial relationships refer to one-sided connections with celebrities or fictional characters. For example, people responded to the statement, “Now that my favorite Neighbors character is off the air, I feel lonelier” on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

This same measure of parasocial separations was first used to understand people’s reactions until the end of the TV series “Friends” in 2004. The study determined that fans experienced a similar level of distress to the end of a real-life relationship.

In the “Neighbors” study, people who experienced the most grief formed strong bonds with their favorite characters and became emotionally involved with them.

“They imagined how their favorite character was thinking and feeling. They felt happy when their favorite character was happy and worried when they faced danger,” Gerace said.

The phenomenon isn’t exclusive to TV shows, he added: People can also feel sadness after finishing a book series or video game.

“Neighbours” has a unique cultural meaning in Australia, Gerace said. Many people who participated in the research have watched the series for almost four decades, and the audience spans generations. The show was also part of people’s everyday lives – most fans watched an average of about five episodes a week.

Dara Greenwood, an associate professor of psychology at Vassar College, said the series’ length could partly explain why fans felt such a profound loss at the end.

“The more time you spend with certain characters, the more bonds have a chance to develop and become part of your everyday life,” said Greenwood, who was not involved in the study.

People’s personality traits or life experiences can also influence their reaction, she added. For example, a person who sought comfort in the program to compensate for a difficult family relationship may experience more acute grief. There is also some evidence to suggest that lonely people are more likely to form bonds with fictional charactersalthough the the same appears to be true for extroverts also.

Greenwood said grieving the end of a parasocial relationship is a fundamentally human response.

“It speaks to our human tendency to feel connected and then feel loss,” she said. “It would be strange if we didn’t feel that way.”

Research has similarly shown that people experienced grief following the deaths of public figures such as Robin Williams and Princess Diana. One to study found that requests for grief support and counseling services increased in the three weeks after Diana’s death.

But psychologists still aren’t sure how parasocial grief compares to the actual loss of a loved one.

“Some people say, ‘Actually, it’s quite similar. I felt the same way when my grandmother died. And you have some people saying, ‘No, it’s not the same intensity. I was sad at the time, but I was able to move on very quickly,’” Greenwood said.

Elizabeth Cohen, who studies media and pop culture psychology at West Virginia University, said mourning the death of a celebrity or TV character is not necessarily less intense than mourning the death of a loved one in real life. Instead, she to look for suggested that feeling close to someone could be a better predictor of how deeply someone mourns a loss.

“The level of access we have to media figures is actually, in many cases, unlike anything we have when we try to befriend people in our social lives. So of course we will be able to have that feeling of attachment to them,” Cohen said.

Bonding with a fictional character can even benefit people’s relationships in the real world. Gerace’s findings suggest that parasocial relationships can help people practice empathy or imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes.

Greenwood said connecting with characters who look different from you can also reduce stereotypes or prejudices.

“When suddenly someone feels like a friend, they are no longer in this category of ‘other,’” she said. “It’s much harder to say, ‘Oh, it’s okay to treat these people badly.’”

However, as with any relationship, becoming too attached to a TV character can have some negative consequences.

“It’s only when that comes at the expense of real-world relationships, or maybe we’re just trying to satisfy our needs for social connection through these parasocial and fictitious relationships, would that potentially be a problem,” Gerace said.