Prolonged grieving disorder
The Lovely Bones written by Alice Sebold should not be banned because it address the negative impacts real life situations specifically traumatic deaths of loved ones can have on mental health. Although the act of establishing prolonged grieving as a mental health disorder is still discussed controversially (Kersting, 2010), it is clear all of the Salmon family in The Lovely Bones is suffering from what is known as prolonged grieving. Morbidity, mortality, and parental grief: A review of the literature on the relationship between the death of a child and the subsequent health of parents found various ways adults adjust to death, most typical adults deal with grief in stages. The stages help with being able to eventually adjust over time with lower reported levels of grief. However, not knowing how to properly grieve a lost one cause can cause significant mental health issues. The Lovely Bones follows a family who did not know how to properly deal with the effects of grief.…show more content… Kristensen writes that “not recovering the body can lead to unresolved grief and feelings of helplessness, depression, somatization, and relationship conflicts” (Kristensen, 2012). Salmon’s family was never able to give her a proper final resting place. For this reason, the family never experienced grief in the typical four stages that Kersting writes about. Hendrickson posits another possible reason for the families’ prolonged grieving disorder, “Homicide, for example, involves media coverage and contact with the criminal justice system, which can constitute an additional burden for the next of kin. There is some evidence that those bereaved by homicide exhibit higher levels of PGD and PTSD than those bereaved by accident or suicide” (Hendrickson, 2009). The circumstances surrounding Salmon’s death contributed to her families’ prolonged
