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Prolonged Grief Disorder is an internationally recognized condition and is included in diagnostic manuals.

Prolonged grief can cause significant negative impacts.

Understanding the signs and symptoms of PGD and seeking help are key to recovery.

Grief is the intense pain that follows a profound loss. Grieving is an unavoidable, painful, and profound reaction and process in the aftermath of the loss of someone or something deeply meaningful and loved. While we typically associate grief with the death of a loved one, we can also experience grief through other significant losses, like the loss of a job, the loss of a beloved pet, the loss of a significant relationship, a life-changing accident, or diagnosis (your own or of a loved one), and significant, definitive life-changing transitions, like the end of active parenting, when children leave the family home, retirement or the end of a career.

At some point in our lives, we will all experience loss. How we process our loss can have a profound impact on our health, our relationships, and our ability to reintegrate and return to living a full and meaningful life.

Grief and the grieving process

In the 1960’s, psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the five stages of loss, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, a framework that, over time, has been widely discussed, reframed, and revisited, with many mental health experts and researchers adding to the discussion. (Why the Five Stages of Grief are Wrong, by David B. Feldman, Ph.D., offers an excellent exploration of the limitations of Kübler-Ross’ stages of grief.)

In On Grief and Grieving:........

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