Suffering is the price that man pays for love. The cost comes in the form of pain, heartache, anger, disorientation and numbness. The good thing is that these feelings will most likely change over time.
But here’s the catch! Not all people are lucky enough to face sorrow. As time passes, the grief of losing a loved one becomes more intense and painful, causing people to have a long-lasting longing to see or be with their loved ones.
When the duration of mourning reaches a limit, ordinary grief turns into “prolonged grief disorder (PGD)”. PGD is no longer a theoretical condition, in 2022 it was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5.
What is chronic grief disorder?
PGD is a form of grief that does not subside over time and interferes with the person’s ability to adapt to the loss.
People in this condition face difficulty in accepting the loss and moving forward properly in their lives.
According to Holly Prigerson, director of the Cornell Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medicine, “PGD is a chronic, acute, distressing response to loss, which is distinct from bereavement-related depression and anxiety.”
People suffering from this disorder experience a distorted reality marked by emotional isolation and numbness.
The neuroscience behind prolonged grief
Recent neuroscientific insights are changing how we view PGD beyond the expression of intense grief. According to a 2026 review in Neurosciences, the condition arises from “a biological disturbance” in the brain’s attachment and reward networks.
For people struggling with PGD, these neural mechanisms remain stuck in a loop, signaling that the deceased loved one is still accessible to them.
Eventually, a constant conflict develops between what is actually real and what you want to believe is real. As a result, the brain fails to update its emotional map and begins to lose the ability to process loss.
“The case appears to be that people suffering from severe grief are still showing an expectation of reward from their loved one when they see a beautiful picture,” said Mary-Frances O’Connor, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona and author of The Grieving Brain.
Another research conducted in 2020 and co-authored by Prigerson found different activity patterns in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex of people with PGD. These patterns hinder their abilities to process emotions.
Despite these researches, scientists’ understanding is still in the initial stages. Richard Bryant, a psychology professor at the University of New South Wales and co-author of the study, says that because PGD was only recently classified as a formal diagnosis, the scientific community is still trying to unravel the patterns.
Is PGD quite common?
According to Prigerson, about 4 percent of people develop PDG after a loss. This is more common when a person experiences violence and sudden loss.
Prolonged grief is responsible for causing many health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, highly fluctuating blood pressure, and higher mortality risk.
How to Treat Prolonged Grief Disorder?
According to grief experts, PGD does not respond to antidepressant and psychological treatments.
The only treatment for this is chronic pain therapy. Therapy consists of 16 sessions marked by healing milestones.
The healing journey begins with accepting grief, re-imagining a promising future, connecting with memories of the dead, and remembering the reality of loss.
According to research, 70 percent of people have seen improvement through these sessions.
