Should we do away with grief?

[Demas]

Apparently Lancet is reporting that the new draft DSM leaves open the diagnosis of depression for a person greiving more than two weeks - http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Psychiatric+bible+classify+bereaved+mentally+journal/6165681/story.html

I've always been intrigued how deep issues which I would class as spiritual are papered over with a film of scientism in the DSM process. It's especially noticeable when the DSM comes into conflict with the legal system in questions of culpability etc - the legal system does its own papering but does it differently 

Should we be medicating the bereaved? Is grief something we should treat?

[Nadine]

Ultimately it is the choice of the individual what they think they can cope with, but I would not usually encourage them to look for medical solutions. It depends how beside themselves they are I suppose. It's understandable that people consider taking meds. Grief can feel like a kind of madness, scary emotions and physical sensations and thoughts that are outside of your control. Who wants to endure that?! Please just take it away! A lot of early bereavement work is reassuring people they are not medically mad, that this pain and craziness is human. We know it in the cold light of day, but when we are in the middle of pain and craziness it is often accompanied by self doubt and anxiety about what is happening to us.

I think I would want to turn the question round a bit though, and ask not whether grief should be medicalised, but whether so many other human responses to life should be treated as illness? I find it appalling sometimes that when people go through the mental and emotional suffering which is normal to expect in the face a range of horrible human experiences, they risk being pathologised or given a mental health label if they talk about the struggle. Which wouldn't matter so much if our society wasn't so systematically shaming about such matters. So stick a pill down your throat, shut up and fit in.

[midgecat]

I think there are a lot of issues the new DSM is trying to take over and medicalise, and many more it already has done.  The article seems to suggest that the issue is about confusing people who are bereaved with people who REALLY DO have a mental illness and are depressed.  In my experience most people who are labelled as depressed have a very good reason for feeling that way - they can't find a job, are in oppressive relationships, live in lousy conditions, are single parents with 4 kids, no money and abusive ex partners. 

I'm always minded of drapetomania when things like this come up
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Drapetomania

[Bonzo]

Drapetomania - wow that's a term to remember.

I love the considerate and compassionate responses here.  I've been posting elsewhere for a bit and was beginning to wonder if every Christian was bonkers!

It's a long time since I lost someone close to me.  Both my parents are still alive and healthy, same with web widdow's, so I guess I have grief still to come, and I don't really feel as qualified as I might to talk about it.  But I have a suspicion (correct me if I'm wrong) that the pain of grief serves a sort of purpose, is it, can it be, a way of confirming how important the person was to you?  Does that realisation somehow do justice to the wonder of that human being who is no longer with us?  Does numbing that pain with drugs actually interfere with something crucial? 

 

[Demas]

"A lot of early bereavement work is reassuring people they are not medically mad"

I find this an interesting sentence in light of the way the new DSM might classify them!



 

[Nadine]

They are bonkers, Bonzo! In good ways and bad ways!

[Nadine]

I agree, Demas. It's interesting the way we use the word medical, and the kind of power and authority we give to medical discourse in our society, even though it is only one way of trying to put words and ideas onto aspects of human experience. It seems to me that words like disease and illness and health, etc., have been loaded with moral judgements and spiritual significance through the centuries, and it is fascinating how discourses surrounding them, whether scientific or religious, are often practiced by people attributed with power, upon relatively passive recipients, though I sense that is changing.

[Bonzo]

They are bonkers, Bonzo! In good ways and bad ways!

Remind me of the good ways.

[Nadine]

Well, I am thinking of people like you! People who are committed to seemingly impossible ideals which make the world a less brutal place.

In the gospels, even Jesus' mum thought he was off his trolley.

[seeka]

Doubts and Loves is well worth reading in this regard- Richard Holloway.

It is however, of course, impossible to 'do away wiv grief.'

[Bonzo]

Well, I am thinking of people like you!

Yup, I'm bonkers.

[The Toad]

Much as it goes against the grain for me to say something in favour of Christianity, I have found that even my skeletal and terminally undernourished faith gives me relief, of a sort, from grief.  My 'picture' of God supplies me with 'somebody' who cares how I feel, who understands, and in whom I can confide; it also lets me hope that death isn't the end, and that the essence of my loved ones - my parents and even our old dog - may somehow have gone to 'Him' and be there with 'Him' now in some unimaginable way.  I suppose it may all turn out to be a load of self-deceiving poo, but (a) if I thought the beliefs were ridiculous I couldn't hold them, (b) it's more effective, and less costly, than medication, and (c) if there isn't an afterlife, I'll never know that my hope was misplaced.  Religion may be an 'opium', but given the human condition some form of pain killer is necessary for most of us at some time, and the consolation provided by 'God' seems to be a reasonable one - provided it's taken in small doses, of course.

[Bonzo]

Religion may be an 'opium', but given the human condition some form of pain killer is necessary for most of us at some time, and the consolation provided by 'God' seems to be a reasonable one - provided it's taken in small doses, of course.

I think religion does provide some people with hope and comfort. Starving people look to God to help them for instance, and I'm not sure it's wrong to be unrealistic if it helps you, and if there is no other course of action you could take to alleviate the situation.  As you say, though, it's limited by what one can believe.