What Exactly Is “Complicated” Grief? A Scoping Research Literature Review to Understand Its Risk Factors and Prevalence

Abstract

Most people will experience bereavement grief, but some suffer from persistent or prolonged (PoP) grief, grief that used to be identified as “complicated” before recent DSM-5 and ICD-11 definitional developments. In 2020, a scoping literature review was undertaken to identify and consolidate contemporary evidence from research articles published in 2018 or 2019 in paper-based and open access peer-review journals on: (a) the incidence or prevalence of PoP grief, and (b) who develops it or is diagnosed as suffering from it, and correspondingly what causative factors or predictors are associated with PoP grief. All of the 11 identified research articles reported an incidence or prevalence rate, with these varying greatly, but with a much higher rate now that a 6-month post-death measurement timeframe is used. The predictors or factors among people who were identified as having PoP grief also varied considerably, although sudden and unexpected deaths were often implicated.