Producer Ben Kiberkirre, to better understand the grief process, we reached out to Dr.

Catherine Shear. Dr Shear is a psychiatrist and a professor at Columbia University whose recent research

focuses on bereavement in grief, especially what

psychiatrists now call prolonged grief, which is grief that doesn't get better on its own and

interferes with daily life. Prolong grief is especially common

for relatives of homicide victims

and people who die in violent ways.

All right, here's our interview with Dr. Shear.

So I guess just to start, what's your name, who do you work for, and what do you do? So my name is Dr. Catherine Shear, and I'm a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and I direct the

Center for Prolonged Grief at the school of social work.

Maybe kind of even before we get to prolonged grief,

can you talk about kind of like what is grief in general

and how is it similar or dissimilar to depression?

So the question of what is grief is one that is a really good question.

And the answer to it is really that it's the response to loss.

And the work that I've done has all been loss of a loved one.

Bereavement is the loss of a loved one.

But grief occurs after all kinds of losses. It's not only the loss of a person.

And it's a simple definition, right? It's a response to loss, but it's a very complex multifaceted, has a lot of different components to it,

grief does, and it changes over time, there are

unique to each relationship.

But at the same time, there are commonalities in it.

...