This week on Here After with Megan Devine:
What’s the deal with Prolonged Grief Disorder (and why should you care)?
PROLONGED GRIEF DISORDER! It’s everywhere – social media, The New York Times, The Washington Post… it’s the hot new medical condition everyone’s talking about. But why is everyone so mad about it?
This week on the show, an overview of this hotly contested “new” human disorder, and what it means for the average person, for healthcare providers, and honestly – for the whole world.
This is one medical diagnosis that affects everyone.
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In this episode we cover:
- Why anyone should care what the APA thinks about grief
- The actual diagnostic criteria for prolonged grief disorder (translated from psych-jargon into the way real people speak)
- Access to care + funding for research: two of the main reasons people think this diagnosis could be helpful (and why it isn’t)
- The real world impact of the DSM: doubling down on shame and misunderstanding
- Why launching new rules about how long it’s ok to grieve is more than a bit problematic while we’re still in the middle of a mass death and mass disabling event (aka the pandemic)
- One surprise reason this diagnosis *could* be seen as a good thing
Additional Resources:
For an interview with both Megan and the author of the NYT article, Ellen Barry, on WGBH TV Boston, click here.
To read Megan’s more detailed response to the NYT article, including tweet-by-tweet takedowns of most of the major “pro disorder” points, check out the original Twitter thread, and the extended thread. Versions of these threads are also here on the blog.
Want to read even more about our culture’s deep avoidance of human emotion, and all the ways that messes with day to day life? Maybe more important, want to know what’s actually normal inside grief? Check out Megan’s best-selling book, It’s OK that You’re Not OK, and follow @refugeingrief on IG/FB/TW
We recommend you check out the Perfectly Normal campaign, serving up just the validation you need when you’re feeling like the only person in the world doing that “weird” thing you do.
Therapist, clinician, or other healthcare provider? Be sure to check out upcoming trainings that address PGD and re-humanizing grief. Follow Megan Devine on LinkedIn, too.
Other articles on prolonged grief disorder include Medicalizing Grief May Threaten Our Ability to Mourn
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The AMA pronouncement of “prolonged grief disorder” was devastating to me. I’m in year five after the death of my husband of 34 yrs whom I met at age 18. I have had to fight against this idea that there was “something wrong” with me for still missing my beloved. I’ve pushed back at the idea that should get “over him” and “Move on” and meet someone else. I’ve resisted the misguided suggestions that I need medication because being sad this long isn’t “normal”. For five years I’ve been able to shut all this down with friends and family and say “no, it’s not wrong for me to be feeling my feelings.” Now I feel I’ve lost all credibility and support in handling my grief my way because the NYT says I’m “mentally ill”. My best friend sent the NYT article to me as if to say “we are right about you, you need help”. A terrible decision by the AMA, which I suspect was influence by big pharma. Declare it a disorder, and both doctors and drug companies can make $$$ producing and prescribing antidepressants and other meds to almost everyone!