Research continues to challenge assumptions about the fundamental nature and course of grief: its roots in biology, emotions, and social interactions. This work examines contemporary approaches to bereavement, examining both normal adaptation and complicated manifestations of grief.

New research continues to challenge our assumptions about the fundamental nature and course of grief: its roots in our biology, our emotions, and our social interactions. The ""Handbook of Bereavement Research"" provides a broad view of diverse contemporary approaches to bereavement, examining both normal adaptation and complicated manifestations of grief. In this volume, leading interdisciplinary scholars focus on three important themes in bereavement research: consequences, coping and care. In exploring the consequences of bereavement, authors examine developmental factors that influence grief both for the individual and the family at different phases of the life cycle. In exploring coping, they describe exciting new empirical studies about how people can and do cope with grief, without professional intervention. People do not grieve alone, so chapters on coping present new ways to understand grief at an interpersonal level as well. Until recently, intervention for the bereaved has not been scientifically guided and has become the subject of challenging differences of opinion and approach. Chapters in the care section of the volume critically examine interventions to date and provide guidance for assessment and more empirically guided treatment strategies. The ""Handbook"" provides an up-to-date comprehensive review of scientific knowledge about bereavement in an authoritative yet accessible way that should be useful reading for researchers, practitioners and health care professionals in the 21st century.