Can or should grief be medicated?

It is with dismay, bewilderment and some disbelief I read that grief has now been medicalised and been classified as a “pathological” condition. Grief is the most natural emotion or feeling experienced when someone they love dies. I mean even swans grieve (or at least show signs of loss) when their mate dies and will remain near the body of their mate.

Humans have suffered grief and have mourned since they first walked the earth – some 1.5 million years ago so why is it only now in the last few years that it is considered in the same category as a “mental illness”?

Now (as “defined” by the American Psychiatric Association – APA, in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version 5, DSM 5) there are Major Depressive Disorders (MDD); bereavement-related major depressions (BRMD); Later Bereavement Disorders (LBD); also - possibly - an Adjustment Disorders (AD) – adjusting to the now changed circumstances. Then there is also apparently research into the validation of intense lengthy grief to determine if this is a “pathology”, (in other words a biological “illness”) - a pathology called “prolonged” or “complicated” grief (PG or CG). Validation, I understand, rests on the risk of “future harm” – thus confusing the (possible) risk of a “illness” with an actual “illness” – if you get what I mean! Or even (gasp!) that grief has been “derailed” and become “frozen” or an “interminable” grief!   

Furthermore, apparently, those who determine these things have decided that grief should only last for two weeks. Any longer and it then becomes depression. Once it becomes depression antidepressants may then prescribed.

One is left to wonder if these “experts” have ever grieved or mourned.

It has been written that: “Grief is an automatic reaction, presumably guided by brain circuitry activated in response to a world suddenly, profoundly, and irrevocably altered by a loved one's death.”

There is one HUGE assumption in that statement; the presumption that grief is the result of brain function. But is this really the case?

In my case it was my “heart” that felt the pain of loss – a gut loss - like a wrenching, a tearing of something. My reasoning – my head – tells me that my wife is dead but it is my heart that feels it, that feels the emotion of the loss. Her love; her companionship; her emotional support; her intelligence; her sense of humour are all now absent.

And I still feel the loss – eighteen months after the “event”. But do I need to be medicated; am I depressed; am I suffering from a “frozen” or “interminable” grief?

Apparently, and totally unconsciously, I have adopted an ancient method of coping – writing and reading about grief and grieving. I certainly find this helps me.

But I know that I will always miss her.