Is Grief a Mental Illness? (PATRON-ONLY VIDEO)
Added 2022-04-15 17:06:30 +0000 UTCHello Deathlings!
We have a special Patron-Only video for you today. I don't want to yammer on about it in this post, but in case you missed the New York Times article I'm talking about in the video, you can find a link to it right here.
I'll let you all get straight to the video, but I hope that if you are living with grief you find the help and support that is right for YOU.
Thank you for being here deathlings,
Caitlin
Because of your generous pledge this vlog was made by Caitlin and Team Death Video just for you. We understand the occasional share with a friend, but please don't share this video widely. Thank you!
Comments
New to Patreon and missed this article when it came out. But this has me thinking, and I’ll say this for the DSM. At least opening room for a medical diagnosis is centered on what the grieving person needs when their grief won’t let them go and impedes normal life in that prolonged a way. I feel like most people who want the bereaved to “get over it” don’t actually want that for the grieving person’s sake. They want it for their OWN sake, because THEY don’t want to hear about it anymore. Most charitably, maybe that’s because they’re further along in assimilating their grief, and the reminders hurt. But… I think in our culture we don’t so much pathologize love as pathologize any negative feeling. Eternal and persistent happiness is the measure of success, and hurting in anyway is to be minimized and swept away as quickly as possible. And if our loved one is grieving and we can’t help them “fix” it… we are also failures as friends and family. And when we feel defensive under the surface in that way, we begin to resent the grief and griever. I think that this prolonged grief probably is tied to PTSD and depression. I lost my dad, and my grief developed into a depression that it took me years more to address, but am now medicated for and functional around. I was probably more functional after a year than would have merited the DSM diagnosis, but… I can sense and relate my way to understanding how, especially in cases of trauma and predispositions to depression… grief is natural but it becomes something that can and should be treated. When I went on medication… I became myself again, and I still grieve my father after more than 20 years, and always will, but I know very certainly now that it’s grief… not the other stuff.
Laura Berwick
2024-01-21 18:21:34 +0000 UTCprolonged grief sounds like it could develop into PTSD
Melissa Elphinstone
2023-08-02 06:26:26 +0000 UTC
