“I would feel misunderstood and diminished:” Perceived helpfulness of a grief diagnosis among grievers

Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) was recently added to DSM-5-TR. However, concerns remain about its applicability in various bereaved subgroups. This study examined views toward a grief-related diagnosis among a sample of 755 bereaved adults that was diverse regarding relationship to the deceased and manner of death, with over half having lost a child and 36% meeting PGD criteria. Most were between the ages of 45 and 64 years. The majority (72.2%) rated a grief-related diagnosis as unhelpful, 11.4% rated it as helpful, and 16.4% were unsure. A thematic analysis of responses to an open-ended question about their rating generated four themes: 1) grief as the measure of love, 2) emotional and existential harms of pathologizing grief, 3) medicalization and contextualization within systems of care, and 4) finding utility in the language of disorder. Overall, most respondents rejected diagnostic labeling of grief and emphasized the need for compassionate, context-sensitive support.