ABSTRACT
A new grief disorder has been suggested for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5; see Prigerson et al., 2009). However, children are not mentioned in the proposal. It is important that our understanding and intervention efforts reflect the uniqueness of children’s grief and that an adult diagnosis is not inappropriately used for children. In this chapter we will first describe the consequences of and risk/protective factors associated with childhood bereavement. Then we will discuss what constitutes complicated grief in children, including why the proposed diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder is inadequate for capturing the variety of complicated grief reactions in children. Finally, we present what is known about intervention following bereavement in childhood and discuss some important issues in this regard.
