18 years after his stillborn daughter was born,Steven Guy said: “I have moved on; I can talk about the day she died and not cry, sometimes…She has changed me from the shy insecure person I was then to the openly emotional, caring, supportive, and strong man I am now.”
The Lancet discusses grief in the context of DSM5’s draft proposal to further medicalize grief.
“Building a life without the loved person who died cannot be expected to be quick, easy, or straightforward. Life cannot, nor should not, continue as normal. In a sense, a new life has to be created, and lived with. After the loss of someone with whom life has been lived and loved, nothing can be the same again. In her memoir to her husband, Nothing was the same, Kay Redfield Jamison, comments: “There is a sanity to grief” in contrast to her own experience of bipolar disorder …
… Grief is not an illness; it is more usefully thought of as part of being human and a normal response to death of a loved one. Putting a timeframe on grief is inappropriate—DSM-5 and ICD-11 please take note. Occasionally, prolonged grief disorder or depression develops, which may need treatment, but most people who experience the death of someone they love do not need treatment by a psychiatrist or indeed by any doctor. For those who are grieving, doctors would do better to offer time, compassion, remembrance, and empathy, than pills.”