This weekend has been troubling or disturbing for many of you. Since the news of Kobe Bryant’s death on Sunday, a lot of public mourning and discussion about Bryant has taken place in news fairs and on social media. That made me think about grief and how it works. How does the death of a talented, controversial, problematic, loved and larger than life personality like Kobe Bryant together with his 13 year old daughter Gianna and seven other people affect the general public? I admit that I have a personal connection here. I grew up in Southern California. I saw all these legendary games with my father back then. We are immigrants related to our neighbors and the community by cheering on purple and gold. The sudden shock of the tragedy has shaken many of us in the church, even if we have never met anyone in person. How does the grief we feel since the news of Bryant’s death relate to the grief that arises when someone you know personally dies? Modern research has made it clear that there is not only one type of grief. We have all heard grief coming in stages, but the reality is far more complicated than the Kübler-Ross model suggests. There is also considerable controversy within the mental health community when it comes to defining only the word “grief”. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association launched the fifth edition of its Guide to Mental Disorders – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly known as DSM-5. This is the rule in every respect when it comes to categorizing and describing psychiatric complaints. The book is an imperfect attempt to filter out and understand the types of wounds that you cannot see on an MRI or X-ray, but that have a profound impact on the health and livelihood of so many people. The definition of grief in DSM-5 differs significantly from the previous iteration – it eliminates the “grief exclusion” in DSM-IV. Exclusion defines grief as a fleeting thing that is separate from more serious psychological conditions like major depression (MDD) as long as it doesn’t take too long. The DSM-5 has turned this idea upside down and eliminated the exclusion. According to the revised criteria, grief is not necessarily just a slip, but possibly the harbinger of a more serious and long-lasting illness. That doesn’t mean that clinical depression and normal grief are exactly the same (that’s not the case). In a sense, however, this has been an effort by the psychiatric community to analyze the complications of human sadness. It is a complicated science. All of this leads to our current understanding that when you grieve someone you have never met, you don’t have to feel weird. We leave the death of our own loved ones. Communities mourn those who know them. This grief can even spread to completely strangers, even to people who have mixed feelings. It’s all right. Recognizing this has helped me process my feelings about Bryant’s death. I hope you feel the same way. Source
