Grief and AIDS: surviving catastrophic multiple loss

This article explores the issues of grief brought about by the AIDS epidemic. As people affected by the epidemic experience multiple deaths in both their personal and professional lives, the parallel epidemic of grief is reaching crisis proportions. Traditional grief responses are compared with multiple loss grief and appropriate clinical interventions are explored. The phenomena of trauma, survivor guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other historic examples of multiple loss (holocausts) are examined. The existential questions of how to hold hope as we live in an "abyss of trauma, death and grief" concludes this article.