Facing Loss — Letters that should have been in the new york times

12.4.22

To the editor:

Jill Biolosky writes poignantly about her complicated process mourning the loss of her sister by suicide (12.4.22 Grief is a forever thing). She also criticizes the American Psychiatric Association's recent addition of prolonged grief to the DSM-V. While the latter risks pathologizing a healthy albeit painful process, it serves to highlight that for some people a normal process of mourning may go awry and such individuals may benefit from treatment. Losses that are tragic, traumatic or highly ambivalent (for example, the death of a parent who was abusive) are particularly hard to mourn. As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst I have worked with many patients for whom living fully after loss was difficult due to unresolved feelings of guilt in relation to the deceased. It is not that sadness can be or should be eradicated from one's psyche. If one lives constantly haunted by loss one has become deadened or prematurely died.

Respectfully

Larry S Sandberg