Complicated Grief and the Quest for Meaning: A Constructivist Contribution

One of the more important results of the upwelling of research on bereavement in recent decades has been the development of criteria for complicated grief, a disorder whose coherence, correlates and consequences have been subjected to increasing scrutiny. In this article I argue that clinical, conceptual, and evidence-based considerations converge to support the further refinement of such criteria, with a special emphasis on their connection to the protracted and painful quest for meaning that characterizes a subset of the bereaved. As further research supports and extends these current efforts, there is reason to believe that an understanding of complicated grief can make a significant contribution to research, theory, and practice concerning adaptation in the wake of loss.