Culture, bereavement, and psychiatry: Lancet article by Arthur Kleinman

Author: 
Arthur Kleinman
Publication date: 
12 February 2012 (All day)
"The American Psychiatric Association (APA), as recently reported in The New York Times and an article in World Psychiatry, is undergoing a controversy over listing grief as a mental illness in the forthcoming fifth edition of its influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Earlier editions of DSM have reasoned that after the death of a close relation, a psychiatrist should wait 1 year (DSM-III) or 2 months (DSM-IV) before labelling the sadness, disturbed sleep, loss of appetite and energy, agitation, difficulty concentrating, and other psychological and physiological sequelae of such profound loss, depression; and treating it with pharmacological agents and psychotherapy." (See link for continuation.)