The 5 Stages Of Grief Essay

Minton 1

Abbey Minton

Professor Sears

ENGL 1302. S08

23 April, 2017

How to Deal With Grief Death; a word that no one seems to want to talk about. But why? Death is something that will happen to all of us at some point in our lives. So why don't we talk about it? The answer is incredibly simple. Fact is, the world we live in has put a negative connotation to the word death. We tend to associate it with bad things that happen to people. While we all understand the concept of death, not many understand the concept of grief and how it effects your everyday life. There have been numerous accounts by many professionals attempting to unveil how to help someone who is grieving or who have recently lost someone they care deeply about. Psychiatrist Julie Axelrod has recently, as of 23 April, 2017, published what she believes to be the five major signs of grief. The first and most important of the signs of grief that she lists is denial. She states in her articles “The 5 Stages of Grief and Loss” that "the first reaction to learning about the terminal

There have been several studies that have concluded that a traumatic grieving period can cause the Complicated Grief Disorder. Psychologist Virginia Hughes wrote an article entitles Shades of Grief: When Does Mourning Become a Mental Illness?. In this article, she wrote that this, “new diagnosis refers to a situation in which many of grief’s common symptoms . . . last longer than six months” (scientificamerica.com). This type of grief is also referred to as Abnormal Grief. Katherine Shear, a psychiatric professor at Columbia University, stated that just because it meets the “requirements” for complicated grief does not necessarily mean that the person is suffering from depression or PTSD/post traumatic stress disorder