NY Times illustration for Dr. Francis' article
Guest writer Pia Chaudhari is a Ph.D. candidate at Union in Psychiatry and Religion.
In response to the New York Times Op-Ed of August 14, 2010 titled ‘Good Grief ‘by Allen Francis, I wish to share my relief in Dr. Francis’ defense of the sacred rituals of mourning and the process of grief and its resolution.
What is frightening about the proposal for the DSM 5 to label common symptoms of grief as major depressive disorder is that it is symptomatic of the splitting of our fast-paced, technology-oriented, scientifically-minded society away from the roots of deep human wisdom and experience. Much necessary good has come from the advances in psychiatry of the past 150 years, but scientific reasoning can not and should not replace the capacity for deep feeling or the derivation of meaning in our lives. In our culture’s quest to promote a life entirely free of pain, we risk losing our own deepest capacities for joy. If we as a society are no longer willing to tolerate the suffering that comes with loving, with caring, with being human in an uncertain world, then we will no longer be able to tolerate love, care or the uncertainties of being human. There is no drug which will make life free of suffering or uncertainty, but there is comfort and healing to be found in loving relationships, trusted community and sacred rituals–all of which we risk losing at our own deep peril.
I like this article and your post, but I always thought that people experiencing grief could get anti-deppresants from their primary care physician and often do. How does the DSM-V designation of grief as major depresssion effect the use of medication? Also, I wonder if the quick move to want to medicate people comes from the social factor that communities of support for the grieving (and in general) are less common in a fragmented/individualistic culture. Do we really have good systems of support to help us through the stages and transitions of life, or do people more often feel left to “go it alone” and makes sense of their experience apart from others.
Thanks, Pia, for your thoughts. Maybe grief is one of those fringe experiences that drags us to the edge of what society considers normal, controlled human experience. It’s so blasted scary out on the fraying edge that medication looks like a pretty great option. But sometimes it seems that, out there on the fringe, the whole spectrum of human emotions dazzles into to brilliance. It’s like when we (or I) have known that pit of grief, emotions have this surprising, new cavernous pit/space to ring in, and their richness resonates all the more. In these moments of grief, what it means to be human zooms into brilliance. Is that too abstract? And yes, Robert, if only we would trust in the healing “medication” of communities and friends and loved ones during times of grief… Those who venture out onto the fringe with the grieving are compassionate lifesavers and it seems like their own human journeys are richer because of it.