Resource Center

This Whole Health tool focuses on grief related to a death loss. A focus on other types of losses (such as disability, divorce, job loss, effects of natural disasters) is beyond the scope of Coping with Grief and related tools. However, you may find the information in this Whole Health tool helpful when working with a Veteran who has experienced a loss other than death.

To best support an individual who is grieving, it is helpful to know common ways that grief affects individuals and what an individual may go through during the grief process. This will help prevent you from pathologizing reactions that are normal and enable you to reassure individuals who are concerned about their reactions. It is crucial to keep in mind, though, that people have their own unique grief experience. In grief, each person is like everyone else in some respects, while at the same time like no one else. This Whole Health tool summarizes common grief reactions, duration of grief, and tasks of mourning.

Grief researcher William Worden has identified grief reactions that are common in acute grief and has placed them in four general categories: feelings, physical sensations, cognitions, and behaviors.[1] All are considered normal unless they continue over a very long period of time or are especially intense. An individual might have one reaction, several, or many. Reactions might be very strong for a while and then lessen, or they might not be as strong but last for a long time.

About The Organization: The Whole Health Tool, which is a part of The U.S Department Of Veterans Affairs, includes both delivering excellent health care and designing health care systems with a new focus. We shift the mindset from the disease or other problem at hand to the reasons we want our health in the first place, asking “What really matters to you?” instead of “What’s the matter with you?”

Citation: Grief Reactions, Duration, and Tasks of Mourning was written by Charlene Luchterhand MSSW, LCSW (2014, updated 2019).

Keywords: Grief, Death loss, Coping with grief, Whole Health tool, Veteran support, Grief reactions, Grief process, Tasks of mourning, Loss experience, Unique grief experiences, Emotional support, Normal grief reactions, Pathologizing grief, Grief duration, Disability, Divorce, Job loss, Natural disasters