This is a ridiculous proposal. Grief is the emotional and psychological equivalent to the Measles. It makes you feel miserable, but it's rarely fatal. With the application of support from family, friends (and if necessary from professionals) it can even become an experience that helps us to grow and mature both individually and as a society. Death is a universal human experience. Everyone who lives into adulthood will lose people close to them; family, friends, acquaintances. To recast the experience of grief as a mental illness will only serve to deepen our current societal difficulties in dealing with death. We live in a society that strives to deny this reality. We've created an entire industry to separate families from the intimate experience of waking and burying the dead. Where once family members died and were waked in their own home, we now have transferred these events into hospitals and funeral homes. We spend billions on an endless variety of cosmetics, medical ...
Reflections from the pastoral ministry of an Evangelical Catholic Priest.