Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting
...Time does not heal, It makes a half-stitched scar That can be broken and again you feel Grief as total as in its first hour. -Elizabeth Jennings
I think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.
I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, that there is no question that grief can trigger depression in vulnerable people and there is no question that depression can make grief worse.
I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually - I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth.
People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through and it really helps you out.
In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.
