Grief is normal and necessary. It’s simply love after loss. Because love doesn’t end, neither does grief. Normal symptoms of grief—including those stipulated in the new PGD diagnostic criteria (intense yearning, preoccupation with thoughts/memories, identity confusion, disbelief, avoidance of reminders, intense emotional pain, difficulty engaging with others/life, emotional numbness, feelings that life is meaningless, and intense loneliness) often last beyond the PGD-allowed six months for children and one year for adults. Pathologizing grief and mourning only compounds our unhealthy cultural stigmas around death and grief, and ultimately injures mourners further.

As you may know, a number of clinicians want to be able to have insurance reimbursement for this "condition." In addition, researchers are now celebrating because they can seek out grants to search for a "cure" for the disorder. However, these rationales are no reason to pathologize normal and necessary grief.

Loss changes us forever, and grief is natural. It’s also a naturally slow process—especially in complicated loss circumstances. While mourners experiencing complicated grief do need and deserve ongoing compassionate care (self-care, lay care, and professional care), they do not need or deserve to be told that they have a disorder…because they do not. They are simply human beings encountering and slowly finding ways to integrate life’s often random, unexpected, unfair, and/or violent losses. 

Many of those in grief we support at the Center for Loss and Life Transition are experiencing "psychic numbing" or "acute aftershock" for the first year and beyond after a death. Now, they run the risk of being diagnosed with a "mental disorder" based on an inappropriate linear time frame.  

This petition has been created by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition. Read Dr. Wolfelt’s full position on Prolonged Grief Disorder here:  https://www.centerforloss.com/2022/04/grief-is-not-a-disorder/ 
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Those who sign agree that Prolonged Grief Disorder should be removed as a diagnostic entity from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This petition will be submitted to the American Psychiatric Association, which creates, revises, and publishes the DSM. While it may not make a difference at this point, it will make a statement! Please join Dr. Wolfelt in being a "responsible rebel."