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October
2002
Grief: Our Most
Prevalent Condition
The sudden and hideous advent of terrorism within our borders brings
home with clarity – and for some people for the first time
– the importance of understanding grief. Always a subject
ripe for scholarly investigation, it’s not just academic anymore.
The Center,
under a grant from the Project on Death in America of the Open Society
Institute, has been focusing for some time on grief as the quintessential
mind-body issue.
We have assembled
a panel of 28 leading researchers on the subject to ask: What do
we know about the natural process of grieving? When does it become
pathological? What do we know about treating it?
Just as in
medicine, the first rule of grief counseling must be “do no
harm.” Second, researchers must learn how individual grieving
over the loss of a loved one – a dying parent, a child killed
in a car crash, a friend taken too young by cancer – differs
from mass grief over terrorist actions.
It is obvious
that grief is a most prevalent condition. Almost all of us experience
it at some point and most make our way through it with support from
friends, family, religion and community. But some people are incapacitated
by grief and cannot function healthily in society without professional
help.
Although the
science has advanced in the past 20 years, there are big gaps in
our understanding of what happens when people grieve – how
the psychological and emotional experiences associated with bereavement
in some people turn into health problems, including compromised
immune function and other physical ailments. Grief takes a tremendous
toll on individuals, businesses and health care resources. But much
of this may not be avoidable, and we should not be looking for some
quick pharmaceutical or medical fix that will erase the residual
effects of loss.
It is likely
that most people go through the grieving processes that do not require
medical intervention. In looking at the science of grief, however,
we hope to get a better understanding about what the signs and signals
are of grief that can and should be supported medically.
Our country
has suffered a great loss. It is right and just that we are grieving.
These events reminds us that our aim is not to eliminate grief –
one of the most basic human emotions. Rather, it is to focus efforts
to find appropriate and effective roles for health care services
in responding to it.
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