Many of you will be aware of the debate currently raging over the inclusion of grief as a mental disorder in the new diagnostic manual for psychiatry. If the proposed inclusion goes ahead, being sad for two weeks after bereavement will meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder.
A recent editorial in the Lancet comments that "“Medicalising grief, so that treatment is legitimised routinely with antidepressants, for example, is not only dangerously...
