HealthCentral: Can Grief Really Be a Chronic Condition?

Prolonged grief disorder is now in the DSM. Does this codify mourning, push people to “get over it,” or help treat true illness? Featuring AFTER EFFECTS by Andrea Gilats.

An intensely moving and revelatory memoir of enduring and emerging from exceptional grief

With PGD, “people remain stuck for years, sometimes decades, where they cannot get back a sense of joy, wholeness, purpose, and meaning,” [Dr. Holly G.] Prigerson explains.

That’s how it felt for Andrea Gilats, Ph.D., 76, of Saint Paul, MN. A writer, educator, artist, and author of the new book After Effects: A Memoir of Complicated Grief, she tells the story of her husband, Tom’s, short bout with cancer in 1998. In the story, she discusses how she lived with complicated grief following his death at 52. It felt very much like a chronic condition, she says, a grief that was unending and daily.

Read the full article at HealthCentral.