In today's world of rush, rush, rush, there's often no time to say goodbye to a loved one when they die. Yet, our priorities must change. Dying is a part of life. It can't be avoided, however much we wish it, and must be accepted and dealt with.
Let's say it's been two years since your father died and your mom still won't go out socially or stop talking about wanting to join him. Similarly, perhaps you can't shake a sense of meaninglessness into your life as the anniversary approaches of the death of someone close to you. This is exactly what prolonged grief disorder is all about.
Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD), previously called complicated grief, has now become a recognized mental disorder. Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston developed and tested standard criteria for identifying the condition, based on the input of a team of experts in bereavement and mood/anxiety disorders. It is shortly to be included in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMV-5), the psychiatric care bible for diagnosing problems. The research was done with widows and widowers but is also applicable to the general population.
Wasn't it a past US president who said ‘there are two sure things in life: death and taxes'? He was absolutely right, and he wasn't alone. Poets, professors, priests, and the ordinary man in the street have always talked about what unites us all: in a word, death.
But, what makes a ‘good death'? Is there such a thing? And how can each of us come to terms with the inevitability of what is facing us?
Education and preparedness is the route. It's only by understanding and planning for what is to come that we can avoid the stress, anguish and mental unhealthiness that follows avoidance and denial. In truth, death is nearly as unique as the life that came before it - shaped by the attitudes, physical condition, medical treatments, and mix of people that accompanies it.
