A Study of Normal Bereavement

¹ Department of psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo. 63110

By systematically interviewing relatives of a series of hospital patients who died, the authors have delineated the symptoms of normal bereavement. Only three symptoms—depressed mood, sleep disturbance, and crying—occurred in more than one-half of the subjects. At follow-up two to four months later 81 percent were improved and only four percent were worse. Those improved dated their improvement to six to ten weeks after the death. Ninety-eight percent of these relatives did not seek psychiatric assistance during the bereavement period.

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