Grief and Bereavement: What Research Shows About Loss and Recovery

Grief is the response to loss, most commonly the death of a loved one, but also loss of health, relationships, roles, and futures. It is among the most universal of human experiences, and the research on bereavement has grown substantially over the past several decades, challenging longstanding assumptions about how grief unfolds and what supports healing. Understanding what research shows about grief is important for clinical care, public health, and the broader cultural understanding of loss. Stage theories of grief, particularly Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, have been enormously influential in popular culture and in clinical settings, despite being based on observations of dying patients rather than bereaved individuals. Research testing the stage model directly finds limited support for a universal sequence of grief stages. A landmark longitudinal study by George Bonanno and colleagues found that grief trajectories are much more varied than stage models suggest, with several distinct patterns observed in bereaved populations. Bonanno's research identified resilient grieving as the most common trajectory, accounting for approximately 35 to 65 percent of bereaved individuals in various studies. Resilient grievers experience genuine grief and sadness but maintain relatively stable functioning and do not experience prolonged disruption of daily life. This finding challenged the assumption that anyone who does not exhibit profound visible grief is in denial or has not processed their loss. The research suggests that resilience in bereavement is common and normal, not a sign of failure to grieve. Prolonged grief disorder, characterized by intense, persistent, disabling grief that does not improve over time and that represents a significant departure from the individual's pre-loss functioning, was officially recognized as a diagnosable condition in the DSM-5-TR in 2022. Research estimates that approximately 7 to 10 percent of bereaved individuals develop prolonged grief disorder, with higher rates following traumatic loss, suicide loss, and loss of a child. Evidence-based treatments for prolonged grief disorder, including targeted therapies adapted from trauma-focused approaches, have been developed and show effectiveness in clinical trials. Complicated bereavement, a broader term sometimes used interchangeably with prolonged grief disorder, reflects research recognizing that some bereaved individuals experience trajectories that do not normalize over time and that require professional support. Factors associated with complicated bereavement include the nature of the relationship with the deceased, the circumstances of the death, the bereaved individual's prior mental health history, available social support, and concurrent life stressors. Continuing bonds theory, which emerged from research critiquing earlier conceptualizations of healthy grief as requiring emotional detachment from the deceased, proposes that maintaining an ongoing internal relationship with the deceased can be compatible with healthy adaptation. Research finds that most bereaved individuals maintain some form of continuing connection with the deceased, whether through memories, imagined conversations, meaningful objects, or spiritual beliefs, and that this continuation does not necessarily indicate pathological grief. Cultural and religious traditions that explicitly support ongoing connection with the deceased, including ancestor veneration and practices of maintaining the presence of the deceased in family life, show varying bereavement outcomes that complicate universalist models of healthy grief. Social support is among the most consistently documented factors in bereavement outcomes. Bereaved individuals with strong social networks, particularly those that include people who can provide practical assistance as well as emotional support, show better adaptation than those who are more isolated. Research on grief support groups, including both peer support groups and professionally led groups, finds benefits for bereaved individuals who participate, including reduced isolation, validation of their experience, and peer modeling of coping strategies. Cultural considerations in grief are significant and often underappreciated in clinical settings. Grief expressions, mourning rituals, and beliefs about the relationship between the living and the dead vary substantially across cultural traditions, and what appears to a clinician from one cultural background as complicated or abnormal grief may be culturally normative. Cultural humility and awareness of the cultural context of bereavement is essential for effective clinical care.