Grief Diagnosis - ABC News: Grief following the death of a loved one isn't a mental illness that requires psychiatrists and antidepressants, according to editors of The Lancet, who oppose "medicalizing" an often-healing response to overwhelming loss.
Routinely legitimizing the treatment of grief with antidepressants "is not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed," says the unsigned lead editorial appearing in Friday's edition of the influential international medical journal. "Grief is not an illness; it is more usefully thought of as part of being human and a normal response to the death of a loved one."
In rare cases, a bereaved person will develop prolonged grief or major depression that may merit medical treatment "or sometimes more effective psychological interventions such as guided mourning may be needed," they wrote. However, they suggested that for the majority of the bereaved, "doctors would do better to offer time, compassion, remembrance and empathy, than pills."
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