Pathologic grief and its relationship to other psychiatric disorders

The authors defined explicit criteria for the diagnosis of pathologic grief, and used the criteria to examine the relationship between pathologic grief and two disorders: major depression and anxiety disorders (panic and generalized anxiety), in a sample of 25 bereaved persons. Sixty-four percent of the sample met the criteria for pathologic grief. Pathologic grief was only significantly associated with major depressive disorder. It was also associated with high scores on dimensional measures of anxiety and depression. The most frequent complication of bereavement appeared to be an anxious subtype of major depressive disorder that occurred in conjunction with severe, prolonged separation distress.