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Prolonged grief disorder matters because it distinguishes grief that has become stuck and impairing from the normal, gradually easing grief that follows any significant loss. It is diagnosed as an intense, persistent yearning for or preoccupation with the deceased, lasting longer than expected by social or cultural norms, typically beyond around six months, and causing significant impairment. For example, imagine a woman who, a year after her husband's death, still cannot accept the loss, avoids all reminders of him, and feels her life has no purpose. In practice, that persistence well beyond the expected adjustment period, with real functional impairment, points to prolonged grief disorder rather than ordinary mourning.

Features include difficulty accepting the death, intense emotional pain, identity disturbance (a sense that part of oneself has died), avoidance of reminders, and difficulty engaging in new relationships or activities, all persisting beyond the culturally expected mourning period. Normal grief, while often painful and long-lasting, gradually eases in intensity over time and does not cause this level of ongoing functional impairment. Take two widows two years after bereavement: one still feels sad on anniversaries but has resumed work and hobbies, the other remains as acutely distressed as the first month and has stopped seeing friends entirely. In practice, that lack of any easing over time, combined with impairment, is what separates prolonged grief disorder from normal, evolving grief.

• How do ICD-11 and DSM-5-TR differ on the time that must pass since the death before prolonged grief disorder can be diagnosed in an adult?
• Which circumstance of a death most raises the risk of prolonged grief disorder?
• Which treatment has the best evidence for prolonged grief disorder?

• Normal grief, intense at first but gradually eases and integrates over time, unlike prolonged grief disorder's persistent, unrelenting yearning.
• Major depressive episode, pervasive low mood and anhedoniaThe loss of the ability to feel pleasure from things that used to be enjoyable.Read more → across all domains, rather than prolonged grief disorder's specific preoccupation with the deceased.
• PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), centres on re-experiencing a traumatic event and threat, whereas prolonged grief disorder centres on yearning for a lost person.
• Prolonged grief disorder, diagnosed only once symptoms exceed social and cultural norms in duration, unlike normal grief, which has no fixed timeline.

• Good end-of-life support tends to reduce rather than raise the risk.
• Regular benzodiazepines risk dependence and do not treat the disorder.
• The thresholds are the other way round.
• Neither system uses a three-month threshold for adults.
• Two years exceeds both thresholds.

• Extract the defining phenomenology, duration, severity and functional-impact clues.
• Match the pattern to the most specific diagnostic or assessment construct.
• Actively test the closest look-alike against the missing or contradictory clue.
• Choose the precise term rather than a broader category that is merely compatible.