The Medicalization of Grief

Day 1109. 

It has come to my attention, from several directions, how misunderstood grieving a child can be.

The suicidal thoughts are common - mine were with me for months. 
The notion of that enchanted exit as an escape from my agony, was a constant companion for when I could stand it no more. 

Many Mothers have felt the same. 
Some have shared this deep hopelessness with their therapists only to be met with the threat of being sectioned. Some actually were.
One woman who had lost a second child took herself back to therapy with a new therapist to be met by the police at the end of her session and carted off for 3 days in a psych ward.

What good would it possibly do to commit a grieving mother already feeling the spiral of a life without control to a psychiatric hospital?
Many mothers learned to not speak of their hopelessness.
Fucking marvelous!

Surely in session with a therapist is the best place to explore and examine the inability to envision a way to carry on living in the face of pure agony without your child.

When your child dies, you experience an indescribable agony and the survivor’s guilt is massive.
We couldn’t save our children.
Keeping our children alive is a primary instinct.
The death of my child shattered all that it meant to me, to be a mother.
I lost confidence in my parenting.

The Psychiatric Times (May 13, 2010) examines the medicalization of grief and the DSM classification.  The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is a book published by the American Psychiatric Association providing standardized criteria to the diagnosis of mental health conditions. It is used widely to diagnose mental conditions and for insurance purposes.
There’s no bright line separating those who are experiencing loss in their own necessary and particular way from those who will stay in depression without psychiatric help (medication). Reducing the normalcy and dignity of pain short circuits the expected existential processing of the loss, reducing the relevance of the many well-established cultural rituals for consoling grief, and would subject many to unnecessary and potentially harmful medication treatment.
A grieving Mum I know went to the hospital with the first of her panic attacks. It ended up as an overnight stay and a heavy Xanax prescription. It wasn’t long before she was in rehab.

Education can solve the problem of false-positive diagnosis

The article goes on to discuss diagnosing major depressive disorder not at 1 year, not at 1 month, but now at 2 weeks after the loss of a loved one. 
Let’s be clear about this; 2 weeks after the death of your child, if you are still crying all the time, you are not sleeping, or sleeping too much, not eating properly and anxious, the DSM diagnoses you as mentally ill, and if your doctor has no independent thought, they will too.
There’s no line between expected loss and traumatic loss. There’s no line for the loss of a child.
2 fucking weeks! Are they nuts? Did any of them lose a child? I fucking doubt it!
Well I can tell you, and my journal is out there for all to read - it took way longer than that for me to get my shit together!

Dr. Joanne Cacciatore speaks of a research study that showed that 4 out of 10 were actually medicated within 48 hours and studies that show medication doesn’t actually work in the early stages of grief. 
Oh, do any of the DSM panels have financial interests in pharmaceuticals? Boston University did a study and found that 56% of the panel on DSM-IV did, 69% on DSM-V.
Their inquiry into the relationships between DSM panel members and the pharmaceutical industry demonstrates that there are strong financial ties between the industry and those who are responsible for developing and modifying the diagnostic criteria for mental illness.
Why is that allowed?

With over 192 dying each day at the hand of substance use disorder, leaving, in our case, 3 people totally fucked and in traumatic grief..... that’s a tidy sum for the pharmaceutical industry. That’s a 3 for 1 deal for the industry that put most of us here in the first place.

The unsatisfactory health insurance coverage, the furiously expensive cost of healthcare in the USA is part of what lead us into this opioid crisis. 
“Oh we won’t pay for physiotherapy for your back injury - but we will pay for some “non-addictive” Oxy-Contin to mask the pain - Off you Go! and don’t come asking us for help when you are hooked.”
“Take a pill and back to work with you all!”

Apparently the DSM doesn’t recognize developmental trauma past the age of 2 years old!! 
Dr. Suzanne Frank’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study proves otherwise.
Treating developmental trauma is key to a long-lasting treatment of much, including substance use disorder and the DSM has written it off so that screws up your insurance cover!

‘Oh we won’t pay for your excellent therapist to help you process your overwhelming feelings about your child’s death, nor will we cover your absence from your job as you work through the time tested rituals of grief - get over it - take a pill and get back to work”

I am very lucky (strange to write in the face of my Luke’s death), I have excellent insurance, access to all manner of fancy treatment and I didn’t have to return to work to pay my bills.... but what about the Mothers who are not so fortunate?
The endless stories of those who lost everything to pay for their child’s recovery treatments - who will help them?
What about those who don’t have access to, or the funding for excellent therapists well versed in this particular trauma who don’t shit the bed and section them at the first sign of suicidal ideation? What about those who don’t have the time or. the space to process the time-honored rituals of grief to find their own way through this?

Since I’ve published my book I have met and received emails from extraordinary women who have worked with, rather than against their agony. They are all my heroes and yet they say my book helped.

Is this a place lukelove can help?
The urge to get out there and hug everyone entangled in this ghastly web of child loss intertwined with stigma, is strong.
To join hands, hearts, and minds would be a powerful force for change.

To grieve as deeply as you love, is normal.
To cry yourself to sleep, is normal.
To want to be validated in your loss is too.
Don’t rush us, hug us.
This is going to take a while before we can find our feet.
Well actually, find our new feet.

And as for the suicide, the ‘I can’t go on’….. I didn’t.
You hear it over and over:
I didn’t actually kill myself.
But I did die.
The woman I was died.
And now I am a new woman.