Performance characteristics and clinical utility of diagnostic criteria proposals in bereaved treatment-seeking patients

Abstract

Both proposed DSM-5 criteria for PCBD and criteria for PGD appear to be too restrictive as they failed to identify substantial numbers of treatment-seeking individuals with clinically significant levels of grief-related distress and impairment. Use of CG criteria or a similar algorithm appears to be warranted.

Prolonged grief disorder for ICD-11: the primacy of clinical utility and international applicability

“…Several different statistical methods have been used to confirm the distinct nature of PGD, including confirmatory factor analysis (Boelen, van den Hout, & van den Bout, 2008), latent class analysis (Boelen, Reijntjes, J. Djelantik, & Smid, 2016) and network analysis (Robinaugh, LeBlanc, Vuletich, & McNally, 2014). In light of recent research (Cozza et al, 2016; Mauro et al, 2017), it should be noted that different results have been reported in terms of the diagnostic performance of the PGD-2009 criteria, presumably depending on the study population sample. For example, the original paper (Prigerson et al, 2009) assessed the PGD-2009 in a community sample in the USA, whereas the more recent reports from Cozza et al (2016) and Mauro et al (2017) assessed military and clinical samples and found differing rates of diagnostic sensitivity.…”

“…In light of recent research (Cozza et al, 2016; Mauro et al, 2017), it should be noted that different results have been reported in terms of the diagnostic performance of the PGD-2009 criteria, presumably depending on the study population sample. For example, the original paper (Prigerson et al, 2009) assessed the PGD-2009 in a community sample in the USA, whereas the more recent reports from Cozza et al (2016) and Mauro et al (2017) assessed military and clinical samples and found differing rates of diagnostic sensitivity. This attests to the importance of establishing future diagnostic criteria across a variety of samples.…”

The loss of a fellow service member: Complicated grief in post‐9/11 service members and veterans with combat‐related posttraumatic stress disorder

“…Core symptoms of CG include intense yearning or longing for the deceased, sorrow or emotional pain, and preoccupation with thoughts about the death or the deceased (Simon et al, ). Additional symptoms include difficulty accepting the death, avoidance of reminders of the deceased or of the permanence of the loss, difficulty planning for the future, role and identity confusion, feeling that life is unbearable without the deceased, and a wish to die to join the deceased (Mauro et al, ; Simon et al, ). Although CG shares many similar symptoms with other stress‐related disorders, such as PTSD and MDD, it also includes symptoms that are not observed in PTSD or MDD, and CG can occur independently of these conditions (Bonanno et al, ; Simon, ).…”

Duration of maternal mental health-related outcomes after an infant's death: A retrospective matched cohort study using linkable administrative data

“…shown that current proposed criteria may not sufficiently capture all clinical cases of persistent complex bereavement disorder (Cozza et al, 2016), there is also a lack of consensus of the time course of disabling grief and the timing of treatment (Shear, 2015). DSM-5 requires symptom duration of 12 months for diagnosis, whereas studies of complicated grief consider criterion duration of 6 months and show bene-fit early in the course from grief-specific psychotherapy (Mauro et al, 2017;Shear, Frank, Houck, & Reynolds, 2005). The current study was unable to examine grief disorders as an outcome, but showed that depression and anxiety (typically comorbid with grief) onset within 6 months of the loss and persist for 1 year.…”