What are the signs, symptoms, and stages of grief?
Perhaps the most well-known model for understanding grief was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD, in her 1969 book titled On Death and Dying. The five stages of the grief cycle that she outlined are • denial, • anger, • bargaining, • depression, • acceptance. She described the stage of denial as the bereaved having difficulty believing what has happened, the anger phase as the survivor questioning the fairness of the loss, the bargaining stage as wishing to make a deal with fate to gain more time with the one who was lost, the depression stage as the period when the bereaved person gets in touch with how very sad they are about losing their loved one, and acceptance as feeling some resolution to their grief and more ability to go on with their own life. Kübler-Ross apparently felt these phases can be applied to any significant personal loss (for example, of a job, relationship, one’s own health, anticipating one’s own death), as well as the death of a loved one. It also seems that
