Complicated Grief

Complicated grief is an intense and long-lasting form of grief that takes over a person's life. It is natural to experience acute grief after someone close dies, but complicated grief is different. Complicated grief is a form of grief that takes hold of a person's mind and won't let go. Complicated grief is a chronic, heightened state of mourning. Its symptoms can include: Extreme focus on the loss and reminders of the loved one, Intense longing or pining for the deceased, Problems accepting the death, Numbness or detachment.
Preoccupation with your sorrow, Bitterness about your loss Complicated grief is sometimes treated with a type of psychological counselling (psychotherapy) called complicated grief therapy. It's similar to psychotherapy techniques used for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A more recent prospective study of spousal bereavement identified the most common trajectories of adjustment to loss (Bonanno et al., 2002) and made the compelling finding that resilience is the most common pattern and that delayed grief reactions are rare. Five distinct trajectories covered the outcome patterns of most participants: (1) common grief or recovery (11%); (2) stable low distress or resilience (46%); (3) depression followed by improvement (10%); (4) chronic grief (16%); and (5) chronic depression (8%).

Traumatic grief was measured with a modified version of the Grief Measurement Scale. Survival and regression analyses indicated that the presence of traumatic grief symptoms approximately 6 months after the death of the spouse predicted such negative health outcomes as cancer, heart trouble, high blood pressure, suicidal ideation, and changes in eating habits at 13- or 25-month follow-up. "