Are There Really Five Stages Of Grief?

[Hasina]

Are there really five stages of grief?

People often talk about a set pattern to bereavement, but Claudia Hammond examines whether the evidence shows that everybody shares the same experience.

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.” Joan Didion’s candid account of bereavement in The Year of Magical Thinking provides a powerful experience of what it is like to lose a loved one.

People often talk about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages are taught across the world, have made appearances in TV’s The Simpsons and The Office, and the artist Damien Hirst created a series called DABDA, named after the acronym for the five stages. There is no set timeframe for passing through these stages, but they have become accepted as part of the normal pattern of grief.

The concept originates from work done in the 1960s by John Bowlby, the psychologist who became known for his work on attachment between babies and their parents, and Colin Murray-Parkes, who has written a huge amount on bereavement. Together, they identified four stages of grief from interviews with 22 widows: numbness, searching and yearning, depression and reorganisation. Then Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, famous for changing attitudes towards the treatment of the dying, carried out a series of interviews with terminally ill people, and devised the five stages we know of today to describe the experience of facing impending death – though didn’t test them in any systematic way. Their appeal was such that soon the same five stages were being used to describe other sets of emotional reactions, such as grief.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130219-are-there-five-stages-of-grief

[ali smack]

I think it's probably true to be honest

[AsteroidX]

This is pretty accurate. The 5 stages are what is needed to overcome grief.

Some never fully complete the process. Itleast thats what I was taught in school. It is a good tool to use when you encounter someone that experienced a recent or sudden loss that may be unaware of the grief process to give them a starting point of how to begin to mentally problem solve. I know Ive personally experienced grief that did not go away. And PTSD is a form of grief that some say does not go away. So in some ways I think this is a good model but not the God model for grief.

Everyone experiences grief differently. There is no "picture" of grief or how one deals with it.

[regeneratia]

Are there really five stages of grief?

People often talk about a set pattern to bereavement, but Claudia Hammond examines whether the evidence shows that everybody shares the same experience.

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.” Joan Didion’s candid account of bereavement in The Year of Magical Thinking provides a powerful experience of what it is like to lose a loved one.

People often talk about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages are taught across the world, have made appearances in TV’s The Simpsons and The Office, and the artist Damien Hirst created a series called DABDA, named after the acronym for the five stages. There is no set timeframe for passing through these stages, but they have become accepted as part of the normal pattern of grief.

The concept originates from work done in the 1960s by John Bowlby, the psychologist who became known for his work on attachment between babies and their parents, and Colin Murray-Parkes, who has written a huge amount on bereavement. Together, they identified four stages of grief from interviews with 22 widows: numbness, searching and yearning, depression and reorganisation. Then Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, famous for changing attitudes towards the treatment of the dying, carried out a series of interviews with terminally ill people, and devised the five stages we know of today to describe the experience of facing impending death – though didn’t test them in any systematic way. Their appeal was such that soon the same five stages were being used to describe other sets of emotional reactions, such as grief.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/f...stages-of-grief

Every loss I have had has gone thru those five stages, Kubler-Ross. Every single one. To me, the experiential is fact.

[AsteroidX]

The article doesnt mention how some people can bounce back and forth between different stages and that it is not a 1-2-3-4-5 process.

[JGirl]

i didn't go through any of the stages when my son died, with the exception of accepting it.

i was devastated of course, but never denial or anger bargaining or depression.

we each have a lifetime here. there are no set amount of years that we are guaranteed, and if one accepts that fact then losing a loved one is easier to deal with.

we grieve for ourselves, not for those who have passed.