Traumatic grief - a separate entity?

Grief is a highly individualized process influenced by intrapsychic, interp ersonal and social factors. The definition of normal and pathological grief is complicated by the variety of grief reactions. Empirical research indic ates that pathological grief may be concerned considered as a separate enti ty. Two research groups developed empirically validated criteria with a spe cial focus on the traumatic aspect of grief. The current state of research allows, however, in our opinion not the conclusion, that the proposed diagn ostic criteria for complicated (Horowitz et al. 1997) or traumatic grief (P rigerson et al. 1999b) do not enclose all types of grief. Further empirical research on representative samples is necessary to validate previous findi ngs and to differentiate specific subgroups of pathological grief.