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Grief and bereavement models matter because they give clinicians a shared vocabulary for what is normally an intensely personal, non-linear process, and for recognising when that process has become a treatable disorder rather than an expected response to loss. Grief is the internal, emotional response to a loss, while mourning is its outward, culturally shaped expression, such as wearing black or holding a funeral. For example, imagine a widow who cries alone in private: that is grief, while the funeral she attends with extended family, following her culture's specific rituals, is mourning. In practice, several competing models describe how grief unfolds over time, and knowing which model a question is drawing on is often the key to answering it correctly.

Kübler-Ross described five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, originally derived from interviewing dying patients rather than bereaved relatives, and they are not meant to occur in a fixed, rigid order. Bowlby and Parkes instead described four phases: numbness, yearning and searching, disorganisation and despair, and reorganisation, framed as an attachment-based response to losing a key figure. Worden proposed four active tasks of mourning rather than passive stages: accepting the reality of the loss, processing the pain of grief, and adjusting to a world without the deceased. The fourth task is finding an enduring connection to the deceased while moving forward with life. Stroebe and Schut's dual process model describes oscillation between loss-orientation, confronting the pain of the loss directly, and restoration-orientation, attending to practical life changes and new roles, rather than a single linear direction of travel. For example, imagine a bereaved father who spends one day submerged in memories of his child and the next day focused entirely on managing new household duties. The dual process model frames this alternation as adaptive, not as denial or avoidance. In practice, this means a clinician should not expect a bereaved patient to move tidily through fixed stages, and should instead assess the content, duration, and functional impact of the grief itself.

• What is the main evidence-based objection to stage models of grief?
• Which model holds that maintaining a sense of connection to the deceased is healthy?
• How many tasks of mourning did Worden describe?

• Kübler-Ross's five stages, derived from studying dying patients rather than bereaved relatives, and not meant to occur in a fixed sequence, unlike a rigid checklist some assume.
• Grief, the internal emotional response to loss, rather than mourning, which is the outward, culturally shaped expression of that response.
• Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11), persistent, pervasive longing for or preoccupation with the deceased lasting atypically long, around six months or more, with significant impairment, unlike normal grief, which most bereaved people experience without ever meeting this threshold.
• Major depressive episode, pervasive low mood and loss of interest not specifically tied to the loss, whereas prolonged grief disorder centres specifically on longing for, or preoccupation with, the deceased.

• Emotional change clearly occurs, but not in a fixed order.
• Kübler-Ross's observations came from dying patients rather than from bereaved widows.
• The objection applies to bereavement generally.
• The model dates from the 1960s.
• The detachment view is the older position this model displaced.

• Identify the age, developmental task and theoretical framework in the stem.
• Place the behaviour in the correct sequence or stage.
• Separate normal variation from a milestone or construct that belongs earlier or later.
• Use the distinctive experiment, theorist or clinical implication as the final discriminator.