Mind & Body · Tuesday, 15 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Grief is the brain still expecting someone who has died, and for up to one bereaved person in ten it does not ease

Prolonged grief became a diagnosis only in the last few years, the rules still count only human deaths, and the loss shows up in blood pressure, heart deaths and care homes.

7.5%

of UK adults whose pet died met the signs of prolonged grief

The diagnosis rules still allow it only after a human death. [3]

66%

higher chance of dying in the three months after a spouse dies

From a 2014 study; the extra risk fell to about 15% after that. [8]

39-75%

of bereaved people report sensing the person who died nearby

Researchers read it as the brain relearning a person it can no longer see or hear. [6]

The lead story — what happened

Prolonged grief disorder is intense grief that does not ease with time and makes it hard to get through the day. [1]
It was added to ICD-11, the World Health Organization's list of diseases, in 2019, and to the American Psychiatric Association's manual in 2022. [2]
Its two core signs are longing for the person who died and being preoccupied with them. [3]
Both lists allow the diagnosis only after the death of a person, not an animal. [3]
The WHO list waits at least six months after the death. The American manual waits at least 12 months. [4]
Most people adapt to a loss over time. [1] Studies put prolonged grief at 3 to 10% of bereaved adults. [4]
In a survey of 975 UK adults, 21.3% of people whose child had died met the signs of the disorder, and 11.2% of those whose parent had died. [5]
After a partner died the figure was 9.1%. After a pet died it was 7.5%, about the same as after a close friend died. [5]
One explanation is that the brain keeps a working picture of each person it is attached to. Death cuts off new sights and sounds of them, but the picture stays. [6]
On that view, grieving is a kind of learning: the brain slowly builds a new picture of the person as someone no longer physically there. [6]
Between 39% and 75% of bereaved people, depending on the study, report sensing the dead person nearby. [6]
Recalling the loss for five to ten minutes raised the upper blood pressure reading in 67 bereaved people, and it stayed raised ten minutes later. [7]
A 2014 study found people whose spouse had just died were 66% more likely to die themselves in the next three months. [8]
The first-choice treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy, a talking therapy that mainly targets unhelpful thoughts and avoiding reminders of the loss. [9] Its effects are small to moderate. [9]

Who is involved

Holly Prigerson

a social scientist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York; she spent years getting prolonged grief formally recognised [1]
Philip Hyland

a psychology professor at Maynooth University in Ireland; his survey found pet loss can bring on the disorder, and he wants the rules widened [5]
Wendy Lichtenthal

a clinical psychologist at the University of Miami; she tests a grief therapy built around meaning for parents whose child died [1]
Mary-Frances O'Connor

a psychologist at the University of Arizona; with a colleague she described grief as a form of learning [7][6]

How it unfolded

2014 A study finds a 66% higher risk of death in the three months after a spouse dies. [8]
2019 The World Health Organization adds prolonged grief disorder to ICD-11. [2]
2022 The American Psychiatric Association adds it to its manual. [2]
March 2024 975 UK adults are surveyed about the deaths of pets and people. [3]
January 2026 The survey is published: 7.5% of people whose pet died met the signs. [3]
July 2026 The US National Institutes of Health tells readers that grief has no set stages and no timeline. [1]

Where this points

Watch whether the two diagnosis lists let a pet's death count, as Hyland asks, and whether new grief therapies beat today's small-to-moderate effects. [5][9]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Treatments failing fair tests High↑

Blocking small arteries in the knee eased pain no more than a fake procedure after 12 months. [10] A fresh look at a major glaucoma trial found its benefit vanished once every eye was counted. [11] Stem cell injections into knees eased pain across 28 trials but did not rebuild the joint. [12]

Loss harming the body High→

People who shared a home with someone who died by suicide had a 32% higher risk of dying, in records of 101 million Brazilians. [13] Widowed people had a 67% higher risk of dying of heart and blood vessel disease across 12 studies. [14] Losing a partner raised older people's need for a care home, most of all three months after the death. [15]

Deaths nobody counted Building↑

NPR and Boston University estimate heat plays a part in about 9,000 US deaths a year, five times the official count. [16] Of 878 former American football players who died, at least 215 had a brain disease from head hits, and 643 brains were never examined. [17] As many as half of people with glaucoma, an eye disease that slowly blinds, do not know they have it. [18]

Growing tissue back Building↑

Three teams paid by ARPA-H, a US health research agency, regrew bone and cartilage in animals. [19] Blocking one enzyme regrew joint cartilage in old and injured mice. [20] Brain areas that shrink in anorexia grew back by 5.8% after about three months of weight regain. [21]

The rest of the day

38 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Heat kills five times more than US records show

NPR and Boston University spent two years building a county-by-county model of deaths in the United States. [16] They estimate heat played a part in about 9,000 deaths a year from 2018 to 2025. [16] The official tally kept by the CDC, the US public health agency, has averaged around 1,700 in recent years. [16] Heat often pushes a weak heart into failure and leaves no mark, so the certificate records a heart attack. [16]

Why it matters — A death with no heat on the certificate never reaches the state and federal tallies. [16] In Michigan the model found more than 100 heat deaths a year, ten times the official number. [16]
03
At least one in four former American football players had CTE

CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head. [17] It can only be confirmed by examining the brain after death. [17] Researchers looked at all 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. [17] At least 215 of them, 24.5%, had CTE, and the true share could be higher because 643 brains were never examined. [17]

Why it matters — The biggest predictor is the total force of hits over a lifetime, and in people without repeated head hits the rate is nearly zero. [17]
04
Light exercise after concussion shortened recovery

For years, young athletes with a concussion were told to rest body and mind until every symptom was gone. [22] A 2026 review gathered four studies that tried light aerobic exercise instead, kept below the level that brings symptoms on. [22] In a trial of 118 teenagers, the exercise group recovered in a median of 12 days, against 21 days for a group that only stretched. [22] Lasting symptoms developed in 9% of the exercise group, against 31% of the stretching group. [22]

Why it matters — MedlinePlus, the US National Library of Medicine's health site, still says the main treatment is physical and mental rest. [23] The review's authors call the studies small but say they back a shift toward active recovery. [22]
05
A suicide at home raises the risk for everyone living there

Researchers followed 101 million people in Brazil from 2001 to 2018, linked to national death records. [13] They found 47,982 suicides and studied the people who shared a home with each person. [13] Those household members had a 32% higher risk of dying from any cause. [13] Their own risk of suicide was more than four times higher, and 44% of those suicides came within two years. [13]

Why it matters — Risk was highest in poorer housing and when the person who died was young or female. [13] The authors say support for the family has to start early. [13]
06
Widowed people die sooner, across 1.8 million people

A 2025 review pooled 12 studies that followed 1,785,857 people over time. [14] Compared with married people, widowed people had a 43% higher risk of dying from any cause. [14] Their risk of dying from heart and blood vessel disease was 67% higher. [14] Single and divorced people also had higher risks, and the links differed between men and women and between regions. [14]

Why it matters — It points the same way as the 2014 study of widowed people above: losing a partner shows up in deaths, including from heart disease. [14][8]
07
Losing a partner pushes older people into care homes

Economists at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam studied what happens to older people after their partner dies. [15] Partner loss raised the need for care in an institution, peaking three months after the death at 1.5 percentage points. [15] The effect had gone after about ten months. [15] It was strongest for the very old, the frail, and people with mental conditions of old age. [15]

Why it matters — In a Dutch ageing study the authors analysed, partners gave about 80% of the personal and nursing care older people got at home. [15] So a death often removes the main carer too.
08
Men who lose a sibling young face risk before the anniversary

Swedish researchers used national records from 1990 to 2016 on 12,789 adults who had lost a sibling and later died. [24] They checked whether those deaths bunched around the anniversary of the sibling's death. [24] Overall they did not. [24] But men bereaved before age 50 had a 40% higher risk in the 12 days up to the anniversary, while women had a lower risk on the day itself. [24]

Why it matters — The authors say sibling loss can still harm health, but the risk may appear outside the anniversary and differ by sex and age. [24]
09
Half of young people bereaved by cancer had lasting grief

A 2026 review looked at people aged 25 or under whose parent or sibling died of cancer. [25] Pooling five studies, 48% still reported grief symptoms six months or more after the death. [25] The figure was 28% after a parent died and 59% after a sibling died. [25] Earlier depression, emotional difficulties and poor sleep went with worse symptoms. [25]

Why it matters — No study used a clinical interview, so these are symptoms, not diagnoses, and the estimates are wide. [25]
10
People diagnosed with prolonged grief carry other illness too

Drexel University researchers searched US health records and found 2,464 people with a prolonged grief diagnosis. [26] They compared them with 91,868 bereaved people of similar age without it. [26] Depressive episodes showed up in 81% of the grief group, against 54.3%. [26] Anxiety disorders showed up in 80.7% against 60.8%, and alcohol problems in 24.3% against 18.4%. [26]

Why it matters — Three in four people with the diagnosis were women, with an average age of 59. [26] The authors say little is yet known about who receives this new diagnosis. [26]
11
Grief rises and falls within a single day

In a 2025 study, 228 bereaved adults answered grief questions five times a day for two weeks. [27] The researchers found five different patterns. [27] The largest group, 46%, had moderate grief that moved up and down a moderate amount. [27] One in five had moderate grief that swung sharply, while 8% had high grief that barely moved. [27]

Why it matters — People with similar overall grief scores were living quite different days. [27] The authors say seeing those patterns could help fit bereavement care to each person. [27]
12
Feeling numb came before other grief symptoms

Another 2025 study asked 229 adults, who had lost someone about 30 months earlier, to rate 11 grief symptoms five times a day for two weeks. [28] Yearning and sadness were the most closely linked symptoms. [28] Feeling emotionally numb had the biggest effect on other symptoms at the next check-in. [28] The authors suggest working on pushing feelings down and on avoiding the reality of the loss. [28]

Why it matters — Shutting a feeling off seemed to feed the grief that came after it, which is the pattern in today's lesson. [28]
13
Meditation-based courses eased grief in small studies

A 2026 review found 17 studies of meditation-based programmes for bereaved people. [29] The strongest evidence was for two established courses that train attention on the present moment. [29] They reduced grief distress and depression and improved how people felt overall. [29] Across programmes, people dwelt less on the loss and pushed painful feelings away less. [29]

Why it matters — Most studies were small, measured different things and had no long follow-up, so the review calls these courses promising add-ons, not proven treatment. [29]
14
Bereaved parents mirrored the people trying to help

Researchers in Australia interviewed 16 parents whose child had died about the support friends and others offered. [30] The support was rarely neutral. [30] It either helped parents feel safe, or it made the distress worse through judgement or avoidance. [30] Parents tended to match the helper, opening up when the helper was emotionally available and closing off when the helper kept away. [30]

Why it matters — The study cites earlier work finding that about a third of bereaved people report being harmed by unhelpful support. [30]
15
A small trial will test deepfake video in grief therapy

In imagery rescripting, a therapist asks a grieving person to picture a painful memory of the loss and change what happens in it. [9] Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands plan to add deepfake video, a computer-made likeness, to that exercise. [9] Nine people with prolonged grief will get three therapist-guided sessions over five weeks. [9] It is the first test of the idea for this disorder. [9]

Why it matters — The team hopes a more lifelike exercise will cut avoidance of the loss, but with nine people it can only show whether a larger trial is worth running. [9]
16
A contact lens that measures eye pressure and releases medicine

Glaucoma damages the optic nerve, the cable from the eye to the brain, and is the second-leading cause of blindness. [31] Pressure inside the eye is usually measured in a clinic once every several months, though it changes through the day. [31] Researchers built a soft lens whose shape shifts with eye pressure and releases eye medicine when pressure rises. [31] It worked in the eyes of rabbits. [31]

Why it matters — Daily eye drops are the usual treatment, and people use them less as time goes on. [31] The lens has not yet been tested in people. [31]
17
A glaucoma trial's benefit vanished on a fresh count

The Collaborative Normal-Tension Glaucoma Study is often cited to show that lowering eye pressure by 30% slows glaucoma in people whose pressure is normal. [11] Researchers in Switzerland and Sweden re-examined its statistics. [11] The treated group's starting point had been moved after the trial began, and sight lost to cataracts was left out. [11] Counting every eye from the start, the benefit was no longer significant. [11]

Why it matters — The trial is widely cited as the reason to lower pressure in these patients. [11] The authors call for new trials that count every patient from the day they join. [11]
18
An old pressure line still steers glaucoma treatment

Eye pressure is measured in millimetres of mercury, and 22 was long treated as the top of normal. [32] A study of 1.87 million clinic visits by 94,232 glaucoma patients at seven US eye centres checked when doctors started or stepped up treatment. [32] Treatment rose steadily with pressure. [32] But it jumped most at 22 or higher, even though pressure is now seen as a risk that rises smoothly. [32]

Why it matters — The authors suggest decision tools could help doctors weigh pressure as a sliding risk instead of one line. [32]
19
More glaucoma patients start with surgery

A study of health records from 2013 to 2024 covered 322,910 people with open-angle glaucoma, the common slow form. [33] Starting with medicine fell from 91.0% to 85.8%. [33] Starting with surgery rose from 4.8% to 9.0%. [33] In 40,119 people with angle-closure glaucoma, where fluid drainage is blocked at the front of the eye, medicine rose from 72.4% to 88.6%. [33]

Why it matters — The authors say studies are needed to judge whether these shifts help patients. [33]
20
Glaucoma can keep getting worse after pressure is controlled

Glaucoma kills the nerve cells that carry sight from the retina to the brain. [34] Treatment mainly aims to lower pressure inside the eye, but many patients keep losing sight after pressure returns to normal. [34] A review lists other ways to protect those cells, from drugs that calm inflammation to gene therapy. [34] Most are still in animal or early human studies. [34]

Why it matters — Glaucoma has no early symptoms, and the US National Eye Institute says a dilated eye exam is the only way to check for it. [18]
21
Blocking knee arteries did no better than a fake procedure

Osteoarthritis is the slow wearing-down of the cartilage that lines a joint. [35] Doctors in Rotterdam tested genicular artery embolization, a procedure that blocks small arteries around the knee. [10] Fifty-eight patients got either the real procedure or a fake one. [10] After 12 months both groups had similar lasting pain relief, and inflammation of the joint lining did not change. [10]

Why it matters — The authors say the relief looks mainly like a placebo effect and do not support offering the procedure. [10]
22
Stem cell injections eased knee pain but did not rebuild

Stem cells, often from bone marrow, can be injected into an arthritic knee. [12] A 2026 review pooled 28 trials against control injections. [12] Pain and some daily-activity scores improved. [12] MRI scans showed no consistent rebuilding of the joint, and injection-site pain and swelling were about two to three times more common. [12]

Why it matters — The review says the injections act on symptoms rather than on the damage itself. [12]
23
First human test of a cell-and-cartilage knee injection

Researchers ran a first-in-human trial of OSCA, an injection combining donor stem-like cells with a material made from cartilage. [36] Twelve people with moderate knee osteoarthritis got a single injection at one of three doses. [36] No dose caused serious harm, and 3 of 12 had mild-to-moderate problems. [36] MRI scores of repaired tissue improved in 70% of patients over 24 weeks. [36]

Why it matters — With no comparison group and 12 patients, it shows safety, not proof that the injection works. [36]
24
US agency's teams regrew cartilage in animals

ARPA-H, a US federal health research agency, set out three years ago to find a cure for osteoarthritis, which affects 32 million Americans. [19] Teams at Duke University and the University of Colorado Boulder made injections that regrew bone and cartilage in animals. [19] A Columbia University team may have found a way to regrow a whole knee. [19] The teams must start testing in patients within 18 months. [19]

Why it matters — A UCLA team in the same programme, awarded up to $33 million, aims for a once-a-year injection and a clinical trial as early as 2027. [37]
25
Blocking one enzyme regrew cartilage in old mice

Stanford researchers found an enzyme called 15-PGDH rises in the cartilage of old or injured mice. [20] Blocking it with a small-molecule drug, either through the body or into the joint, regrew cartilage and reduced arthritis pain. [20] The repair came from existing cartilage cells changing which genes they used, not from stem cells. [20]

Why it matters — The study was in mice, so whether it works in human joints is not known. [20]
26
Expecting massage to help did not change how much it helped

Researchers pooled two trials of 375 people with knee osteoarthritis who got exercise with or without hands-on therapy such as massage. [38] Before the trials, each person said whether they expected such therapy to ease knee pain. [38] At nine weeks, high or low expectations made no difference to how much the hands-on therapy helped. [38]

Why it matters — The authors call the finding exploratory. [38]
27
The anorexic brain regrew with weight gain

Anorexia nervosa is an illness of food restriction and very low body weight. [39] A study of 547 girls and young women aged 12 to 30, including 168 with anorexia, scanned brain areas for reward and appetite. [21] During the illness those areas were 5.3% smaller on average. [21] After about three months of weight regain they grew by 5.8%, except parts of the hypothalamus, the brain's hunger centre. [21] Rising leptin, a hormone from fat, explained much of the regrowth. [21]

Why it matters — The authors say brain changes in anorexia are larger than in other mental disorders but largely reversible. [21]
28
Hormones recovered after refeeding in anorexia

A study compared 79 women with acute anorexia against 79 healthy women. [40] Before weight regain, levels of several hormones tied to energy balance and reproduction were abnormal. [40] After short-term refeeding they partly or fully recovered, and they were back in 35 women who had recovered for more than six months. [40]

Why it matters — Healthy women taking the contraceptive pill showed some of the same hormone shifts, so the pill has to be allowed for when reading these tests. [40]
29
Stress hormone changes outlast weight regain in anorexia

Researchers found women with anorexia had high cortisol, the stress hormone, at their first medical visit. [41] Their immune cells were fewer but more active. [41] In rats with an anorexia-like condition, blocking the cortisol receptor calmed their overactivity. [41] The authors say these changes may keep people vulnerable after weight is back to normal. [41]

Why it matters — It challenges using weight regain alone as the sign that someone is in remission. [41]
30
Gut bacteria transplants tried in anorexia

Two small pilot trials gave women with anorexia gut bacteria from healthy donors' stool, mostly as capsules. [42][43] In one trial of 18 young women, 15 completed treatment and gained an average of 38 new bacterial species. [42] Donor strains made up 41% of their gut bacteria three weeks later and were still there at 12 weeks. [42] In the second trial, 18 of 22 adult women completed treatment with no serious harms reported. [43]

Why it matters — Neither trial had a comparison group, so they show the transplants can be given safely, not that they help. [42][43]
31
A high-fat diet tested in anorexia

Even after weight is restored, fear of eating and worry about body shape often last in anorexia, and relapse is common. [39] A small trial gave 22 adults a weight-maintaining ketogenic diet, very low in carbohydrate, for 14 weeks. [39] Eighteen finished, and at the end 72% had eating-disorder and depression scores in the normal range. [39] Three months later, scores had risen in 64% of those who stopped the diet. [39]

Why it matters — There was no comparison group, and a review proposes ketones as another fuel for the starved brain, which is still a hypothesis. [39][44]
32
Online courses cut weight worries in 3,654 women

Researchers in Germany and the US offered online eating-disorder prevention courses to 3,654 women from the general public. [45] Each version was pitched at a different level of risk and ran four to twelve weekly lessons based on cognitive behavioural therapy. [45] Weight concerns fell in four of the five versions among those who finished, and some gains lasted 12 months. [45] But only 18% to 44% completed a whole course. [45]

Why it matters — Online programmes like these work in trials but are rarely used outside them. [45] Here, between 61% and 78% of women did not fill in the final questionnaire. [45]
33
Weight-loss jabs bought online reach people with eating disorders

Emma Dyer, 40, from Nottinghamshire in England, bought weight-loss injections online for 115 pounds, despite a history of anorexia and bulimia. [46] The website asked only for her body mass index, which she could lie about, and within days she collapsed. [46] About 1.6 million UK adults used weight-loss injections in the past year, researchers at University College London estimate. [46] In the US, 18% of adults have taken one of these medicines. [47]

Why it matters — About 26% of US users get them from online providers or beauty clinics, and psychologists warn the medicines can hide or worsen eating-disorder symptoms. [47] The UK charity First Steps ED says its adult referrals rose 57% in a year. [46]
34
Nordic records rank options for people lithium does not help

Bipolar disorder brings swings between very high and very low moods. [48] Lithium is the standard long-term treatment, but many people do not respond or cannot tolerate it. [48] Researchers followed 165,555 people in Sweden and Finland for about nine years. [48] Compared with lithium alone, clozapine, an antipsychotic medicine, went with a 39% lower risk of a psychiatric hospital stay. [48] Clozapine with aripiprazole went with a 58% lower risk. [48]

Why it matters — Among 20,645 people who stopped lithium, several combinations also went with fewer hospital stays. [48] The authors offer these as possible options when lithium fails or is stopped. [48]
35
England and Wales invite 50,000 people into a mental illness gene study

The NHS in England has begun inviting almost 50,000 adults with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis or major depression into a study called GlobalMinds. [49] Volunteers give blood or saliva for DNA, fill in online questionnaires and share their medical records. [49] About 2,000 had enrolled when it was announced, and 1,000 people with dementia will also join. [49] It is run by the company Akrivia Health with Cardiff University. [49]

Why it matters — The aim is to link genes, background and medical history to find who gets severe mental illness and which treatments suit whom. [49]
36
Schizophrenia research after one new medicine and one failure

Most schizophrenia medicines block dopamine, a brain messenger, and mainly ease hallucinations and delusions. [50] In September 2024 the US Food and Drug Administration approved Cobenfy, the first antipsychotic that works another way. [50] In January 2025 iclepertin, another candidate medicine, failed in late-stage trials. [50] A 2026 review says current medicines do little for problems with thinking, a critical unmet need. [50]

Why it matters — A separate review explores Cobenfy for psychosis in Alzheimer's disease, where 10% to 73% of patients have such symptoms. [51]
37
A bladder cancer treatment matched its trial results in real patients

In advanced bladder cancer, standard chemotherapy gives a median survival of only 14 to 15 months. [52] A pairing of enfortumab vedotin and pembrolizumab, approved in the US in 2024, nearly doubled survival to 30 months in trials. [52] A Mayo Clinic study of patients treated outside trials found a median survival of 25 months when it was the first treatment. [52] It was 26 months when given after chemotherapy. [52]

Why it matters — Patients who had already had chemotherapy did as well as those who had not, says the study's lead, Parminder Singh. [52]
38
A breast cancer vaccine drew an immune response in 74%

Triple-negative breast cancer is 10% to 15% of breast cancers and does not respond to hormone or targeted treatments. [53] Cleveland Clinic researchers made a vaccine against alpha-lactalbumin, a milk protein found in about 70% of these tumours. [53] In a small early trial of 35 patients, it drew an immune response in 74% of those who had or were at high risk of this cancer. [53] The team found a tolerable dose and presented the results at the 2025 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. [53]

Why it matters — The trial measured safety and immune response, so whether the vaccine stops the cancer coming back is not yet known. [53]
39
Surgery deaths with COVID fell as hospitals prepared

Researchers pooled data on 31,751 surgery patients with COVID from 1,589 hospitals in 102 countries. [54] Deaths within 30 days of surgery fell from 18.4% early in 2020 to 5.8% by early 2022. [54] Vaccinated patients died less often than unvaccinated ones, 4.9% against 7.4%. [54] Well-prepared hospitals had 5.8% mortality, against 11.2% at poorly prepared ones. [54]

Why it matters — The authors say pandemic plans and protected surgical beds would make surgery safer in the next pandemic. [54]

02 Lesson why it matters

Staying away from what hurts can keep it hurting

Avoiding reminders of a loss, or resting a concussed brain completely, feels safe now and can make recovery take longer.

The twist

Keeping away from a painful thing feels like protection. For grief, and for a concussion, it can also be what stops recovery from starting.

How it works

A loss or an injury hurts
Keeping away from it brings quick relief: avoiding reminders, pushing feelings down, resting completely
But recovery needs contact: the brain has to meet the loss, and an injured body has to move
Keeping away stops that contact, so the pain stays where it was
Small, bearable steps back toward the hard thing let recovery start

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Light exercise after concussion

Teenagers who exercised lightly recovered in a median of 12 days, against 21 for those who only stretched, which questions the old advice of complete rest.
Feeling numb came before other grief symptoms

Shutting feelings off was the symptom that most pushed up other grief symptoms a few hours later.
Bereaved parents mirrored the people trying to help

When helpers kept away, parents closed off too, and those interactions made the distress worse.
Meditation-based courses eased grief

The courses went with people pushing painful feelings away less, alongside less grief distress.

Where you've seen this

Fear of dogs

crossing the road every time means never finding out that most dogs walk past

A falling-out between friends

never raising it keeps it as sore a year later as on the day

Fear of flying

every trip taken by car instead makes the next plane feel more frightening

The catch

Contact helps only in a dose a person can bear: the concussion trials kept exercise below the level that brought symptoms on, and grief therapy goes in steps with a therapist.

And the whole of it

A grieving person decides many times a day whether to look at the photograph or put it away. Their friends decide whether to call or to leave them be. Each of them sees only that day's choice, and whether it helped shows up weeks or months later.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Grief that will not ease was added to the WHO's list of diseases in 2019 and to the American manual in 2022. [2] Both count a person's death but not a pet's, though a UK survey found 7.5% of people whose pet died met the same criteria. [3] Loss also shows up in deaths: widowed people die of heart disease 67% more often, and people who shared a home with someone who died by suicide have a 32% higher risk of dying. [14][13]

Who gains

Researchers studying prolonged grief — A diagnosis code for the disorder let a US health records study find 2,464 patients and compare them with 91,868 bereaved people. [26]
Teenagers recovering from concussion — In one trial, teenagers given light exercise recovered in a median of 12 days, against 21 for those who only stretched. [22]
People with bipolar disorder whom lithium does not help — Records of 165,555 Nordic patients named combinations that went with fewer psychiatric hospital stays. [48]
Sellers of weight-loss injections online — A website sold Emma Dyer injections after asking only for her body mass index, and she says a check of her medical history would have ruled her out. [46]
People with advanced bladder cancer — A newer two-medicine treatment gave Mayo Clinic patients outside trials a median survival of 25 to 26 months, against 14 to 15 on standard chemotherapy. [52]

Who pays

People grieving a pet — However severe their symptoms, the current rules do not let them be diagnosed. [5]
Families in Brazil after a suicide at home — Their risk of dying rose 32%, and most of all in poorer housing. [13]
Very old and frail people who lose a partner — Their need for a care home peaks three months after the death. [15] In the Dutch data, partners gave about 80% of personal care at home. [15]
People with eating disorders — Weight-loss injections sold with no medical check reach them, and one UK charity's adult referrals rose 57% in a year. [46]
Families of people killed by heat — When heat is left off the death certificate, the death never enters the official count that shows the danger. [16]
Former NFL players and their families — CTE can only be confirmed after death, so living players cannot learn whether they have it. [17]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Why widowed and bereaved people die sooner.

No one knows exactly what causes it. [8] Researchers point to sudden stress and to lasting changes in smoking, drinking, diet and exercise. [24]
02

Whether a pet's death will ever count toward the diagnosis.

The 7.5% comes from a single survey of 975 UK adults, and both diagnosis lists still require the death of a person. [5][3]
03

How many former NFL players really have CTE.

At least 24.5% did, but 643 of the 878 brains were never examined, and the disease can only be confirmed after death. [17]
04

Whether lowering eye pressure helps people whose glaucoma comes with normal pressure.

The original trial analysis found a benefit, and the reanalysis that counted every eye from the start found none that was significant. Both use the same data. [11]
05

How many people heat really kills in the US.

The NPR and Boston University estimate of about 9,000 a year is not yet published in a journal, and its authors say the true figure could be higher. [16]
06

Whether light exercise helps every concussion.

The four studies were small and covered narrow age ranges, mostly young athletes. [22]
07

When someone with anorexia is really recovered.

Brain volumes largely return with weight regain, but cortisol and immune changes may last beyond it. [21][41]
08

Whether any injection can rebuild a worn knee in people.

Stem cell injections eased pain without rebuilding the joint on scans, and the cartilage regrowth so far is in animals. [12][19][20]
09

Whether sensing a dead person nearby helps grief or holds it back.

The idea that it helps the brain relearn the loss is a proposed model, and the authors say the evidence on continuing bonds is still inconclusive. [6]

04 Hope carry this

In a trial of 118 teenagers with concussion, those given light exercise recovered in a median of 12 days instead of 21, and lasting symptoms fell from 31% to 9%.

Also true today

Brain areas that shrink during anorexia grew back by 5.8% after about three months of weight regain.
A two-medicine treatment for advanced bladder cancer nearly doubled survival to 30 months in trials, and Mayo Clinic patients treated with it outside trials lived a median of 25 to 26 months.
Among surgery patients who had COVID, deaths within 30 days of the operation fell from 18.4% early in 2020 to 5.8% by early 2022.