When the grieving is prolonged
“Pathological Grief” is the psychiatric jargon used to refer to people who are unable to get over their grief despite the passage of time. Usually, people mourn the loss of a loved one within six months to a year. Among Pinoys, the term “babang luksa” is the end of the year of mourning for a loved one when it would be already all right to start wearing colored clothes. In the past two decades, however, we have already seen a change in the ritual of wearing black mourning clothes. Wearing white has become an alternative. Usually within this period of mourning, the person who has lost a loved one has started to show signs that he or she has moved on, like returning to work.
Sometimes, it may take some people up to several years to get past a serious loss of a loved one. Pathological grief reaction may be diagnosed when one or more than a year has passed and the grieving person is still not yet improving. So when the family physician labels a person’s grief as pathological, he is indicating that the grieving process resolution is delayed for some reason and that professional psychiatric help is needed.
As a family member or as a friend of a person with pathological grief, here are tips on how you can be of help:
1. Offer your emotional support. Most of the time, people who are grieving are very ambivalent or hesitant to reach out and ask for assistance. Tell the griever to call or text you if he needs anything
2. Try to anticipate what the griever needs. You may offer to do an errand, make a phone call, pick up their children or do their other chores.
3. Empathy and understanding of the severity of the loss is of course more beneficial than minimizing the loss. Minimizing the loss may make the grieving person angry and you may be perceived as insensitive.
4. Find time to listen to the grieving person.
5. Suggest professional psychiatric help if the grieving process has become too prolonged.
(For questions on love, looks and relationship, e-mail me at nina.halilijao@gmail.com)
