How do we cope with loss and grief?
Why do some people experience more intense, persistent and prolonged grief?
Mary-Frances O’Connor conducts studies to better understand the grief process both psychologically and physiologically. She is a leader in the field of prolonged grief, a clinical condition in which people do not adjust to the acute feelings of grief and show increases in yearning, avoidance, and rumination. Her work primarily focuses on trying to tease out the mechanisms that cause this ongoing and severe reaction to loss. In particular, she is curious about the neurobiological, immune, and cardiovascular factors that vary between individual responses to grief.
The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing
On sale February 11, 2025
Available for preorder
A celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist shares a follow-up to The Grieving Brain, this time focusing on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body.
How do our brains handle grief?
TEDxUArizona
In this independently organized TEDx event, Mary-Frances discusses how the human brain can create new pathways in order to learn what life is like after we experience a loss and become someone who carries both grief and the absence of another.
