Pertinent Studies on Treatments for Prolonged Grief Disorder

Abstract

Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a distinctive disorder and leads to severe impairments in people’s life. Treatments specific to PGD are urgently needed. However, there have not been enough studies on this topic and universally effective treatments have not been validated. As a result, the current paper aims to summarize some studies about pertinent treatments and list what may be their shortcomings, in order to give future direction for investigation on treatment for PGD. Results show that study of pharmacology for PGD may just start. There has not been effective medicine yet. Complicated grief treatment can be an effective way to treat PGD, but its response rate can be better, if future studies can confirm its real working factors and examine the treatment in a larger and more diverse sample group. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) targeted at CG shows promising outcomes. However, its response rate should also be improved in the future. Meanwhile, as different CBT plans always have different intervention procedure, it may be hard to figure out what really works on PGD and helps to improve. Future study can try to confirm its true therapeutic factors. In all, there is much work need to be done in the future.