Abstract
The death of a close person is often associated with manifestations that symptomatically resemble the profile of clinical depression (intense sadness, insomnia, anhedonia, impaired ability to concentrate or decreased appetite). According to the latest DSM-5, if these symptoms are present for longer than 2 weeks, suffers bereaved person from a major depressive disorder.
This was not always the case. In this review, we present a process that led to the exclusion of a DSM-5 criterion distinguishing normal grief and clinical depression.
In addition to the reasons why grief should be considered an adaptive process, we also present theories that perceive mourning a natural process with specific function. Finally, we offer the conception of mourning according to ICD-10 and its newly prepared version - ICD-11.