The Medicalization & Pathologizing of Grief & Bereavement - A Call to Action

An OP-ED contribution this past week in the NY Times by Allen Frances MD, who was the chairperson of the committee that developed the DSM IV addresses how the new DSM V will affect mental health diagnosis and treatments, particularly in the area of grief and bereavement. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15frances.html?scp=1&sq=Good%20Grief&st=cse. Apparently, what we would term normal grief reactions, may now be diagnosed as major depressive disorder. "This would be a wholesale medicalization of normal emotion, and it would result in the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of people who would do just fine if left alone to grieve with family and friends, as people always have. It is also a safe bet that the drug companies would quickly and greedily pounce on the opportunity to mount a marketing blitz targeted to the bereaved and a campaign to "teach" physicians how to treat mourning with a magic pill." Those of us who deal regularly with grief and bereavement should be concerned about Dr. Frances' warning that, "What is proposed for the D.S.M. 5 is a radical expansion of the boundary for mental illness that would cause psychiatry to intrude in the realm of normal grief, [along with the many effects which will follow for those who suffer from normal grief reactions].