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 complicated grief, a clinical condition in which people do not adjust to the acute feelings of grief and show increases in yearning, avoidance, and emotional numbness. 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 autonomic parameters that vary between individual responses to grief.