Psychiatrists to brand grief lasting longer than two weeks a mental illness

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Two points:

1) It is a travesty to turn ordinary grief into a mental disorder.

2) This travesty is inspired by our for-profit health care system, which will not reimburse a therapist for treating a problem such as grief without a diagnosis.

The reality is that grief is not a mental disorder, but therapy is often very effective in helping people go through the grieving process. Medications may or not be warranted in a given case (imhpo usually not), but that should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and generally only in combination with talk therapy.

Edited to add: This is another outgrowth of our culture's crazy insistence on trying to force emotional issues into a medical "mental health" model, and for only paying for treatments that are at least nominally aimed at "diseases."