Katherine Shear, professor of psychiatry at Columbia, said that the escalating number of deaths—and the way people died—made grief more common and more talked about in the mainstream media.
Psychiatry has added prolonged grief disorder to the latest edition of its diagnostic manual, based largely on the work of Columbia psychiatrist Katherine Shear.
Lack of contact and comfort from other people can slow the acceptance of the reality and meaning of a loss, and keep the intensity of grief “profound and at center stage,” Dr. Katherine Shear said.
“Kids are seeing loss in many different ways,” Dr. Elena Lister said. “They’re surrounded by it — in the news, their parents are talking about it — it’s so unlike regular life."
The digital program GriefSteps is based on a model of grief therapy developed by Dr. Katherine Shear that has been used with people with complicated grief to help with successful adaptation to loss.
Dr. Katherine Shear said that in and of itself, grief is natural and healthy after a loss, but struggling with the difficulty or inability to adapt to the loss can be unhealthy.