Recognizing complicated grief from a doctor's point of view

By reviewing two bereavement support group cases I wish to demonstrate the important role a doctor, also receptive of his patients' non-verbal signals, has in the early recognition of complicated grief and halted grief process. Doctors are aware of individual traumas and destinies, and general practitioners are familiar with the details of their patients' life and home circumstances, could be catalysts for the continuation of the halted grief process. They discover the real cause of trauma behind several psychosomatic symptoms. For professionals working with bereavement support groups and meeting a number of different manifestations of the experience of absence and loss in people facing complicated grief (by its former, stigmatizing term: pathological or distorted grief), synchronizing the work of such heterogeneous groups of people, who have diverse loss history and individual (grief) habitus, is a real professional challenge. In such a work process the activity of doctors and health care workers can be supportive and could facilitate progress.