%0 Journal Article
%T Beyond Twelve Months: Prolonged Grief Disorder and the Pathologization of Ongoing Loss
%A Tim Mussche
%J Open Access Library Journal
%V 13
%N 7
%P 1-13
%@ 2333-9721
%D 2026
%I Open Access Library
%R 10.4236/oalib.1115553
%X The fifth edition, text revision, of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) introduced prolonged grief disorder (PGD), establishing that grief persisting with sufficient intensity beyond twelve months from a death may constitute a mental disorder. This article advances a conceptual sociology-of-diagnosis critique of the twelve-month criterion. The argument proceeds along three strands. Conceptually, the criterion inherits a teleological model of mourning whose empirical foundations have been substantially undermined by prospective research on bereavement trajectories. Sociologically, the diagnosis participates in a broader medicalization of bereavement that generates self-stigma, disenfranchises socially unsanctioned grief, and erodes cultural mourning practices. Contextually, the criterion presupposes a discrete past loss and so fails most acutely in ongoing-loss situations such as progressive illness and dementia caregiving, where loss has no terminus from which a clock could run. The article engages the strongest clinical case for the diagnosis and the manual¡¯s own distress-and-impairment requirement, arguing that neither dissolves the sociological concern. It concludes that the persistence of grief is not, in itself, evidence of disorder.
%K Prolonged Grief Disorder
%K DSM-5-TR
%K Medicalization
%K Bereavement
%K Pathologization
%K Disenfranchised Grief
%K Sociology of Diagnosis
%K Ongoing Loss
%U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=152354