Prolonged Grief Disorder vs PTSD
Author: Angela Bogdanova · Published: October 9, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Research cluster: Grief, Loss & Bereavement · Written by Artificial Sapiens
Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can both develop after a death, especially when the circumstances were sudden, violent, or frightening. The central distinction lies in what organizes the person's ongoing distress. In PGD, the emotional center is separation from someone who has died: persistent yearning, preoccupation, and difficulty living with the reality and consequences of the loss. In PTSD, the central pattern concerns a qualifying traumatic event: intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance of trauma reminders, shifts in thoughts and mood, and persistent threat-related arousal. Both conditions require a clinical assessment that considers symptoms, timing, functioning, and alternative explanations.
This distinction matters because traumatic grief may contain both longing and fear. Someone may intensely miss the person who died, relive the last moments of the death, avoid the hospital or accident scene, feel guilt, and have difficulty sleeping. Those experiences demand careful inquiry rather than an automatic label. Research supports PGD and PTSD as related but distinguishable symptom patterns, while showing that the two frequently overlap following traumatic loss (Jann, Netzer, and Hecker, 2024; Shevlin et al., 2024).
Prolonged Grief Disorder vs PTSD: The Main Differences
The event behind PGD is the death of a person close to the bereaved individual. Its defining response is persistent separation distress, expressed as intense longing or preoccupation with the deceased, accompanied by other painful reactions and clinically significant impairment. A person may feel that life has lost its meaning, struggle with identity after the death, avoid evidence that the person is gone, or feel unable to reengage with important relationships and activities.
PTSD requires exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in a way that meets the applicable diagnostic criteria. Its characteristic symptom clusters include intrusive trauma memories or nightmares; avoidance of trauma-related reminders; negative changes in beliefs, emotions, or cognition; and heightened arousal or reactivity. The person may experience the frightening event as if it were happening again, feel unsafe, scan for danger, or react strongly to cues associated with the trauma. See the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs summary of DSM-5 PTSD criteria.
The difference can be expressed as two clinical questions. For PGD: “How has the person's absence become a persistent source of disabling separation distress?” For PTSD: “How does the traumatic event continue to be reexperienced as a present danger or threat?” These questions guide an interview; neither is a self-diagnostic test. Yearning can coexist with traumatic recollections, and a loss can produce PTSD symptoms without eventually producing PGD.
Side-by-Side Clinical Comparison
Core focus — PGD: the deceased person, their absence, the lost relationship, and the changed future. PTSD: the threatening or horrific event and its continuing psychological and bodily impact.
Characteristic intrusive experience — PGD: persistent thoughts of, longing for, or memories involving the person who died, often with emotional pain over the separation. PTSD: unwanted traumatic memories, nightmares, or flashback-like re-experiencing centered on what happened.
Avoidance — PGD: avoiding reminders of the death's permanence, painful absence, or the life that must continue without the deceased. PTSD: avoiding reminders that elicit trauma memories, threat, or fear. The same location, photograph, or conversation may activate either or both processes.
Emotional tone — PGD: sorrow, yearning, loneliness, anger, guilt, disbelief, loss of identity or meaning. PTSD: fear, horror, threat-related distress, guilt, anger, shame, numbing, and negative trauma-related beliefs. Neither condition has a single emotion that every affected person must experience.
Arousal — PGD: sleep disturbance and physical stress may be present but do not define the diagnosis. PTSD: hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, irritability, sleep and concentration problems, and other alterations in arousal are part of the DSM symptom pattern.
Exposure requirement — PGD: death of a close person. PTSD: exposure must meet the diagnostic trauma criterion. Learning of a natural or anticipated death, without another qualifying exposure, does not automatically meet the DSM-5-TR PTSD exposure requirement. Learning of violent or accidental death affecting a close family member or friend can qualify, and witnessing or directly experiencing a traumatic death can also qualify.
Timing — DSM-5-TR PGD: at least 12 months since the death for adults or at least six months for children and adolescents, alongside the other required criteria. DSM-5-TR PTSD: symptoms persist for more than one month; delayed expression can occur. ICD-11 PGD uses a minimum period exceeding six months, with a strong cultural-context requirement. Clinical support can begin well before any diagnostic time threshold is met.
Treatment emphasis — PGD: grief-focused psychotherapy addressing the death, separation distress, avoidance, meaning, and renewed engagement with life. PTSD: evidence-based trauma-focused psychotherapy targeting traumatic memories, beliefs, and avoidance. Co-occurrence calls for an individualized treatment plan and monitoring of both sets of symptoms.
What Counts as Normal Grief After a Death?
Grief is the varied emotional, cognitive, bodily, relational, and practical response to losing someone important. Bereavement refers to the circumstance of having experienced a death, and mourning includes personal and culturally shaped expressions and practices associated with loss. Sadness, yearning, disbelief, anger, intrusive thoughts about the person, disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating, and temporary withdrawal can all occur in ordinary bereavement.
Ordinary grief can be intense and may remain meaningful for years. Its course is usually variable: moments of acute pain can alternate with connection, functioning, humor, or pleasure. An anniversary, a smell, or an unexpected reminder may create a sudden wave of loss long after the death. No mandatory sequence of five stages predicts the experience of every grieving person.
PGD becomes a diagnostic consideration when a characteristic severe and persistent pattern exceeds expected cultural and contextual norms and produces clinically significant distress or impairment, with the specified time and symptom requirements met. Reaching a calendar anniversary alone does not establish PGD. The American Psychiatric Association's clinical overview explains the importance of duration, symptoms, and daily functioning.
What Is Prolonged Grief Disorder?
Prolonged grief disorder is a recognized clinical condition in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 that can develop after the death of a close person. Persistent, pervasive yearning or preoccupation is central. Additional manifestations can involve intense emotional pain, disbelief, identity disruption, emotional numbness, loneliness, difficulty accepting the death, or sustained problems returning to meaningful daily activity.
The 2022 DSM-5-TR framework specifies a history of bereavement, a central separation-distress symptom, at least three associated symptoms, persistence nearly every day during the preceding month, a duration threshold, clinically significant distress or functional impairment, and a grief response exceeding social, cultural, or religious expectations. The diagnostic interview must also consider other mental health conditions and substance or medical explanations. The APA overview provides the official patient-oriented formulation; the September 2024 DSM-5-TR update clarifies how normal grief and clinically significant impairment are distinguished.
What Is PTSD After Bereavement?
Posttraumatic stress disorder can occur when a bereaved person has experienced a qualifying traumatic exposure associated with the death. A person who witnessed a fatal collision may relive the crash, avoid driving near the location, feel persistently unsafe in traffic, and become unusually reactive to loud sounds. Another person who was threatened during an assault in which someone died may experience the same broad trauma-related symptom clusters. PTSD can also develop after qualifying trauma unrelated to bereavement.
A death by itself does not establish PTSD, and trauma-related distress does not always develop into a mental disorder. The DSM-5-TR diagnosis requires specific patterns across intrusion, avoidance, cognition/mood, and arousal; duration longer than a month; significant distress or impairment; and consideration of other causes. In a prolonged period following the event, a clinician evaluates whether a person's difficulties are predominantly linked to the threatening memory, the ongoing separation, or both. The VA National Center for PTSD summarizes the diagnostic framework.
Why Intrusive Memories Can Look Similar
Thoughts about the deceased are common in grief. They may be tender, painful, involuntary, welcome, or mixed. PGD-related preoccupation tends to return to the missing person, reunion wishes, the lost future, or the impossibility of restoring the relationship. Intrusions in PTSD more often recreate sensory, emotional, or physiological aspects of a traumatic event, especially the sense of danger. In clinical interviews, these differences are explored through the content, meaning, triggers, and consequences of the memories.
A photograph might bring intense yearning to someone with PGD. A photograph of the accident location may elicit vivid re-experiencing and panic in someone with PTSD. Someone living with both may feel intense longing and be overwhelmed by images of the death at the same time. Asking what a reminder evokes is usually more informative than simply counting how often it is avoided.
How Avoidance Differs Between PGD and PTSD
Avoidance occurs in both conditions, but its immediate function can differ. In PGD, a person may avoid sorting belongings, accepting changed roles, going to places once shared with the deceased, or discussing an irreversible future because these actions make the separation painfully real. Some individuals do the opposite and seek continuous closeness to the person's possessions or memories. Patterns differ.
In PTSD, avoidance is tied to distressing trauma memories or external reminders of the traumatic exposure. A person may avoid the route to the hospital, sirens, certain news reports, emergency settings, or discussions of the event because these cues evoke fear, vivid traumatic recall, and bodily activation.
Clinical assessment should explore whether a cue represents loss, threat, self-blame, a practical obstacle, cultural mourning practice, or several processes simultaneously. Research on avoidance and overlapping grief/trauma symptoms supports a more differentiated formulation than one based only on outward behavior (Boelen, 2021; Jann et al., 2024).
Can Someone Have Both Prolonged Grief Disorder and PTSD?
Yes. PGD and PTSD can co-occur, particularly when a close person's death involved violent, accidental, sudden, or otherwise traumatic circumstances. Comorbidity means that the clinician identifies the relevant diagnostic requirements of both conditions; symptom overlap by itself is not sufficient.
A 2024 systematic review of 46 traumatic-loss studies found that both disorders had been studied in the same bereaved populations, but prevalence estimates varied dramatically according to samples, criteria, and instruments. Many studies were cross-sectional, which limits conclusions about causation and the sequence in which symptoms develop. The review identified possible differentiating factors, including the relationship to the deceased, and shared correlates such as social support; these are research associations, not clinical rules for classifying an individual.
A separate 2024 longitudinal systematic review reported that evidence on bidirectional relationships among prolonged grief, posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety remained limited. It is therefore sensible to assess all clinically relevant symptom groups without assuming that PTSD must precede PGD or that treating one always resolves the other.
Is a Sudden or Violent Death Necessary for PGD?
No. PGD can follow an illness-related, expected, accidental, violent, or sudden death. Relationship significance, circumstances of death, prior vulnerability, social conditions, and the person's opportunities for support may shape grief. However, no particular circumstance alone produces the diagnosis. Traumatic circumstances warrant assessment for PTSD in addition to grief-related difficulties.
For PTSD, the way the person was exposed to the death matters diagnostically. Under DSM-5-TR, exposure through learning about a close friend or relative's death generally requires that the death was violent or accidental. Watching distressing media reports without professional repeated exposure generally does not meet the exposure criterion. This distinction protects against equating devastating news with a formal trauma diagnosis while fully recognizing that news can cause profound suffering (VA PTSD criteria).
How DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 Diagnose PGD Differently
DSM-5-TR applies the 12-month adult threshold and the six-month child/adolescent threshold. Its symptom algorithm requires one of two core separation-distress symptoms and at least three of eight associated symptoms, with frequency requirements for the preceding month. The response must be clinically significant, impairing or distressing, out of keeping with relevant norms, and not better explained by another condition.
ICD-11, maintained by the World Health Organization, describes a persistent and pervasive grief response following the death of someone close, with longing or preoccupation plus intense emotional pain. It specifies that the response has endured for an atypically long period — longer than six months at minimum — and clearly exceeds expectations within the person's social, cultural, and religious setting. The ICD-11 framework uses a more flexible clinical description rather than the DSM's precise three-of-eight symptom count; clinically important impairment remains essential. Review the WHO's 2024 clinical diagnostic requirements and a peer-reviewed comparison of both systems.
Neither system treats everyone who continues to miss a loved one after six or twelve months as disordered. The thresholds determine when certain diagnostic labels can be considered; they do not specify how quickly a person should recover or whether supportive care should be postponed.
PTSD Timing and Exposure Requirements Are Different
Under DSM-5-TR, PTSD symptoms must persist longer than one month, and the person must meet the qualifying exposure and symptom-cluster requirements. Some individuals develop a delayed expression of the full syndrome. Experiencing severe distress in the first days after a death therefore does not establish PTSD. Depending on the pattern and timing, clinicians may consider acute stress reactions or other diagnoses; immediate support is appropriate whenever symptoms are distressing or impairing.
ICD-11 also recognizes PTSD, but its diagnostic architecture is narrower than DSM-5-TR in certain respects and centers on re-experiencing in the present, avoidance, and a persistent sense of current threat. The WHO ICD-11 manual provides the authoritative context. Diagnostic criteria should never be assembled by combining a time threshold from one manual with a symptom count from another.
PGD vs PTSD vs Depression vs Adjustment Disorder
Major depressive disorder may arise after bereavement and can coexist with PGD or PTSD. Depression typically involves sustained depressed mood or loss of interest and pleasure, accompanied by characteristic cognitive, physical, and behavioral changes. PGD is organized more specifically around yearning, preoccupation, and the loss of the close relationship. Persistent worthlessness, broad anhedonia, or depressive symptoms across situations should prompt assessment for major depression as well. A bereavement history does not exclude depression. For general diagnostic context, read Depression: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
Adjustment disorder concerns clinically significant responses to identifiable stressors that do not meet the requirements of another disorder and are assessed within their own timing and clinical context. A clinician may consider it when a person's functioning is substantially disrupted after loss but PGD or PTSD criteria are unmet. Differential diagnosis also considers sleep disorders, substance use, acute stress, other anxiety conditions, medical conditions, and the possibility that multiple conditions are present.
Researchers have identified correlated yet distinguishable PGD, PTSD, and depressive symptom dimensions in bereaved community samples (2024 factor-analytic study). Their distinction is scientifically supported, but actual diagnosis requires more information than questionnaires alone.
How Clinicians Tell PGD and PTSD Apart
A comprehensive assessment begins with the relationship to the deceased, the circumstances of the death, the person's exposure to any traumatic event, the time since loss, and how symptoms have changed. It then investigates intrusive experiences and avoidance in detail. The clinician asks about intense longing, acceptance, identity, grief-specific beliefs and social functioning, alongside trauma memories, nightmares, re-experiencing, hypervigilance, startle, and trauma-related beliefs.
Functional assessment matters: difficulty working, studying, caring for dependents, sustaining relationships, attending to basic needs, and resuming valued activities. The clinician also considers depression, suicidal thoughts, sleep, pain, substance use, past mental health difficulties, cultural mourning practices, community displacement, caregiving responsibilities, and sources of social support.
Structured clinical interviews and validated measures can organize information. Examples include grief-focused questionnaires and interviews, PTSD symptom checklists, and trauma-focused structured interviews. Scores are screening or severity information, not standalone diagnoses. A high grief score cannot settle PTSD status, and a high PTSD checklist score cannot determine whether the person also has PGD. The exact tool should match the diagnostic framework, population, language, and clinical purpose.
Clinical reasoning also distinguishes culturally meaningful continuing bonds with the deceased from involuntary disabling preoccupation. Keeping photographs, talking about the person, observing mourning rituals, or preserving a relationship through memory may reflect healthy adaptation. The significance of behavior depends on distress, rigidity, context, and impairment.
Three Illustrative Patterns After a Death
Pattern one: A partner dies from a long illness. Eighteen months later, the bereaved person experiences near-daily intense yearning, profound loneliness, persistent difficulty engaging with work and family, and an overwhelming sense that life cannot continue without the partner. These experiences warrant assessment for PGD, alongside mood, safety, and other factors. Nothing in this brief example establishes a diagnosis.
Pattern two: Someone witnesses a fatal road collision. Months later, they repeatedly experience vivid sensory flashbacks of the impact, avoid roads and vehicles, feel constantly unsafe, and have a heightened startle response. This pattern raises questions about PTSD. The same person may also grieve the death, but the trauma-specific symptoms deserve their own evaluation.
Pattern three: Someone loses a sibling in a violent incident and subsequently experiences both persistent longing and recurrent traumatic nightmares, along with avoidance of places associated with the death and serious functional difficulties. Both PGD and PTSD merit assessment. A clinician examines how each symptom functions, which criteria are met, and which therapeutic targets are most pressing.
These examples illustrate possible formulations. They are not diagnostic templates, and real presentations commonly contain variation, change over time, and more than one explanatory process.
When Does Grief-Related Trauma Need Professional Assessment?
Consider arranging an evaluation when distress remains intense, daily functioning is deteriorating, traumatic memories or nightmares are intrusive, avoidance increasingly restricts life, or persistent longing and loss-related preoccupation leave little room for activity and connection. An assessment is also important when there is severe insomnia, increasing alcohol or drug use, hopelessness, marked depression, or suicidal thoughts.
Seeking support does not require waiting six or twelve months. Counseling, practical care, crisis support, and treatment of clinically significant PTSD or depression may be appropriate long before PGD can formally be diagnosed under a given manual. Families may benefit from guidance about sleep, caregiving, legal tasks, cultural rituals, and support networks while clinical questions are still being clarified.
Which Treatments Help PGD, PTSD, and Their Overlap?
For PGD, grief-focused psychotherapies have the strongest relevant evidence, particularly approaches incorporating cognitive behavioral and loss-focused processes. They may address avoidance, beliefs about responsibility or the future, revisiting painful aspects of the loss in a supported way, emotional connection to the deceased, and gradual restoration of everyday activities. A 2024 meta-analysis of grief-focused CBT trials and a 2025 treatment network meta-analysis support evidence-based grief-focused psychological interventions in adults, while acknowledging variation in study designs and more limited evidence for medication and pediatric care.
A 2025 multicenter randomized clinical trial compared grief-specific cognitive behavioral therapy with present-centered therapy in 212 adults; both groups improved, with greater posttreatment reduction in clinician-rated PGD severity following grief-focused CBT, while longer-term differences on that primary outcome were less certain. A separate randomized study found that grief-focused CBT produced greater reduction in core PGD symptoms than mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at six-month follow-up. These findings support choosing a treatment with a demonstrated grief-specific evidence base when PGD is the principal diagnosis.
For PTSD, the 2023 VA/DoD guideline strongly supports individual trauma-focused treatments such as prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Their evidence concerns PTSD. It should not automatically be carried over to PGD merely because both conditions arise after a death. See the VA's overview of PTSD psychotherapy for an explanation of these modalities.
When both conditions are present, treatment planning should identify the severity, safety issues, avoidance processes, functional priorities, and the patient's preferences. Some clinicians use an integrated or sequenced approach, addressing trauma-related re-experiencing and loss-related adaptation with a coherent formulation. The strongest comparative evidence for exactly how to sequence therapies in confirmed PGD-plus-PTSD remains limited; blanket prescriptions about treating one disorder first are not justified by current research.
What About Medication, General Counseling, and Support Groups?
Medication may be indicated for a co-occurring condition such as PTSD or major depression following a clinical review, but there is currently insufficient evidence for a medication that specifically and reliably treats the core syndrome of PGD. A treatment that reduces sleep problems or depressive symptoms is not thereby proven to resolve persistent separation distress. The American Psychiatric Association and 2025 PGD treatment review distinguish these evidence bases.
General grief counseling and bereavement support groups may provide emotional validation, practical guidance, social connection, and space for remembering. Their usefulness varies with the person's needs, the service, and the program design. For disabling PGD, supportive conversation alone should not be presented as equivalent to specialized evidence-based psychotherapy. For established PTSD, general support is not interchangeable with a recommended trauma-focused treatment. Clinical intervention decisions should also consider availability, access, patient preference, and cultural appropriateness.
Children, Adolescents, and Developmental Context
Children's responses to loss are shaped by age, development, attachment, caregiving stability, and how adults explain the death. Grief may appear through questions, play, changes in behavior, separation concerns, sadness, or intermittent distress. Trauma can also influence children's sleep, sense of safety, play, and reactivity. Adults should avoid assuming that a child who seems cheerful is unaffected or that a child who is repeatedly sad has a clinical disorder.
DSM-5-TR uses a six-month bereavement threshold for PGD in children and adolescents, and preoccupation may involve the circumstances of death. Assessment must be developmentally adapted, consider caregiver reports and school functioning, and evaluate potential PTSD symptoms separately. Adult PGD intervention findings cannot simply be generalized to children: evidence for younger populations remains less developed (APA PGD overview; 2025 treatment review).
Cultural Context, Migration, and Displacement
The meaning and duration of mourning vary across families, religions, communities, and societies. Some mourn openly and communally; others maintain private relationships with the dead through memory, ritual, silence, or everyday practice. Cultural practices, public conflict, disrupted funerals, limited access to remains, migration, and displacement can alter how grief is experienced and supported. Cultural assessment is a formal part of PGD diagnostic reasoning rather than an optional add-on.
Refugees and war-affected communities may face repeated losses, threats, displacement, and limited care access. Research demonstrates varied rates of PGD, PTSD, and complex PTSD across samples, but the figures are highly sensitive to sampling and diagnostic methods. A 2024 systematic review of refugee populations emphasizes this heterogeneity. Clinicians should evaluate each person in context rather than deriving a diagnosis from their community, migration history, or exposure label.
Practical Support While Waiting for Care
A person affected by bereavement and trauma may benefit from a predictable daily routine, stable meals and rest, reduced alcohol or drug use, practical help with responsibilities, trusted people who can listen without forcing disclosure, and accommodations at work or school where available. These measures can reduce additional strain and help preserve functioning. They are supportive steps, not replacements for indicated trauma-focused or grief-focused treatment.
Offer choices about whether to discuss the deceased, the traumatic circumstances, or neither at a particular moment. Avoid pressuring someone to recount graphic details before they feel safe or suggesting they should have reached a particular stage of grief. Helping with transportation, childcare, appointments, or paperwork can be as meaningful as talking.
For broader guidance on traumatic stress and restoration of day-to-day functioning, the English Hub has a related article on Trauma Recovery: Rebuilding Safety and Function After Trauma.
Safety: Suicidal Thoughts After a Death
Bereavement, PTSD, depression, and severe grief can sometimes be accompanied by thoughts about death or suicide. A statement about wanting to join the deceased deserves attentive, direct assessment of what the person means, including whether there is a wish to die, intent, a plan, access to means, and immediate danger. The presence of such thoughts does not by itself determine a PGD or PTSD diagnosis.
If there is immediate danger or a person cannot remain safe, contact local emergency services or go to the nearest emergency department. In the United States, call or text 988 for immediate crisis support; elsewhere use the local crisis service. Stay with the person when safe to do so, and help them connect with urgent professional care. Safety assessment and treatment are priorities regardless of the time since the death.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is prolonged grief disorder a type of PTSD?
No. PGD and PTSD are separately defined clinical disorders. They have overlapping features and may occur together, but PGD centers on persistent separation distress after a death, whereas PTSD requires a qualifying traumatic exposure and its characteristic trauma-related symptom clusters.
Can a peaceful or expected death lead to PGD?
Yes. PGD can occur after an anticipated or medically expected death, and a violent death is not required. The significance of the relationship, the person's persistent symptoms, functioning, timing, and cultural context all matter. An anticipated death does not automatically qualify as a PTSD exposure under DSM-5-TR.
Can someone have PTSD without PGD after a loved one dies?
Yes. PTSD may arise from witnessing or otherwise experiencing a qualifying traumatic event without the person developing the persistent separation distress and impairment required for PGD. A person may also experience normal grief alongside PTSD.
Can someone have PGD without PTSD?
Yes. PGD does not require a traumatic mode of death or the core PTSD intrusion, avoidance, and threat-related symptom pattern.
What is the biggest symptom difference?
Persistent longing for or preoccupation with the deceased is central to PGD. Trauma-centered intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance, and perceived current threat help distinguish PTSD. Individual symptoms are insufficient for diagnosis, and overlap is common.
Does PTSD have to develop first?
No fixed order is required. Traumatic stress symptoms can emerge early, while PGD diagnosis has a later minimum time threshold. Longitudinal research does not establish a universal pathway from one disorder to the other (Janshen et al., 2024).
Is PGD diagnosed at six months or twelve months?
The answer depends on the diagnostic system and age. DSM-5-TR uses at least twelve months for adults and six for children/adolescents. ICD-11 uses a minimum period exceeding six months with contextual and cultural requirements. Neither duration alone makes a diagnosis.
Can counseling help before I meet PGD criteria?
Yes. Support can begin immediately after a death, especially when everyday functioning, safety, sleep, or traumatic stress symptoms are affected. Formal PGD thresholds limit the diagnosis, not the availability of compassionate support or evaluation for other conditions.
Can trauma-focused therapy treat grief too?
A person may experience improvement in more than one symptom area, but that does not mean all PTSD treatments have demonstrated specific efficacy for PGD. The therapy should match the assessed problems, and co-occurring PGD may require grief-specific work.
Can an online quiz tell whether I have PGD or PTSD?
No. Questionnaires can screen for symptom patterns or monitor severity. A clinical interview evaluates trauma exposure, grief-specific symptoms, diagnostic timing, functional impairment, culture, comorbidity, and safety before considering a diagnosis.
Related Articles
References
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