Are normal and complicated grief different constructs? a confirmatory factor analytic test

Nowadays, much debate in the bereavement domain is directed towards the inclusion of Complicated Grief (CG) as a separate category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Important within this discussion is the conceptual relationship between CG reactions and normal grief (NG) reactions. This study aims at elucidating this relationship by using data from 456 bereaved young adults, aged 17 to 25 years. We examined the structural distinctiveness of CG and NG reactions, using two criteria sets. The first set ties in with previous research in bereaved adults on the distinctiveness of CG and NG and allows to test the replicability of earlier findings. The second set links up with the recently revised criteria for CG and permits to investigate whether earlier findings hold for the new criteria. For both sets, two models for NG and CG were compared using confirmatory factor analytic procedures. These analyses revealed that CG and NG reactions can be distinguished by their very nature, except for one CG reaction (viz. 'yearning'), that loaded on both factors.