To say that if grief lasts beyond an artificial time limit, then it is a pathology, a disease to be treated with drugs, is—she believes—to deny the core of being human.

This quote is suggesting that it is not right to consider grieving as a form of depression. The context behind this quote is that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) suggested that people who grieve longer than a year is considered to be having depression. The duration recently got reduced to 2 weeks.

I think it is ridiculous because grieving can’t be given a fixed amount of time to recover from it before it is considered as depression. People can grieve as long as they want because by the quote it denies “the core of being human”. Through my experience I met an old lady who lost her son 4 years ago. She never stopped grieving over him and she also mentioned that she visits her son 3 times a week everyday till this day. According to the DSM she wold be considered to be having depression. However she looks perfectly normal and she didn’t seem to suffer from any symptoms of depression.

I believe that people will eventually get over with the grieving process but different people will take a different amount of time. Another factor would be the loss they have suffered whether it was the loss of something minor such as their neighbor’s pet dog or something major such as the loss of your parents or children.