Grief and Bereavement: Practical Considerations for Health Professionals

Anticipatory grief is the experience of each of the stages of mourning experienced by the patient and their loved ones during the illness process, where the awareness of finitude happens. Being aware of your death means that the entire grieving process is experienced in advance as a perception of the reality of the death that will come. Mourning is the social manifestation of a socially assumed feeling of grief in the face of an experience of loss. Our life is inevitably forever affected by the end of a relationship, situation, project, or dream. The health effects of the mourning period—and even the risk of mortality in the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly—are well known and documented. Although the evidence is clear, little or nothing is done to minimize the risk of life-threatening problems in people in the grieving process. It is very important to remember that grieving is an intense and necessary process, but that caring for the health of the grieving person, in all of its dimensions, is essential for the pain to go away and leave only the memory of what was lived, with even greater value.