We stand at a critical juncture in the shifting landscape of how we understand grief – more specifically, how we draw the line between normal and abnormal grief and whether we should draw that line at all. The medicalization of grief has recently been instituted by two widely used classification systems of mental disorders, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) and the 11th edition of the International Classification of Disorder (ICD-11: World Health Organization [WHO], 2019). Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder (PCBD) was included in the DSM-5’s section of conditions for further study. Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) was formally added as a mental disorder in the ICD-11, grouped with other disorders (e.g., complex post-traumatic stress disorder) under disorders specifically associated with stress. While efforts to harmonize these disorders are underway for future iterations of the DSM (APA, 2020b...
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Wada, K. (2022). Medicalization of Grief: Its Developments and Paradoxes. In: Lester, J.N., O'Reilly, M. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Critical Perspectives on Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12852-4_36-1
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