Assessment of Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Psychometric Commentary

Grief is a universal human experience, though research indicates that responses to loss can vary widely. Although many individuals will develop grief symptoms that generally abate across time, some bereaved persons may develop severe, protracted grief responses that contribute to significant functional impairment and require clinical intervention. After several decades of research, prolonged grief disorder (PGD) was introduced as a psychiatric disorder in 2022 to characterize these intense grief responses and represented a significant move forward in research, assessment, and intervention of grief-related psychopathology for those in need. However, the development of PGD measures and criteria has been impacted by methodological shortcomings that warrant attention. This commentary describes methodological weaknesses of our current measurement of PGD and uses a prominent PGD measure as an example to highlight shortcomings. Implications of measurement shortcomings in PGD as a diagnostic construct and a path forward to improve measurement in the field are discussed.