Mary-Frances O’Connor discusses The Grieving Brain at Saddlebrooke

Presentation given by Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor on The Grieving Brain at Saddlebrooke on Nov. 17, 2022.

Dr. 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 rumination. 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 cardiovascular factors that vary between individual responses to grief.

[CarolOlson-gl]

I found this talk to be quite helpful. I long for the loss of a bonded pet to be included in talks like this more than I've been able to find. It's a disenfranchised grief that's rarely addressed. I hope for this to change in future research and discussions.
Thank you for bringing information to us that explains the types of thing one goes through with a bonded loss relationship.

[martinote]

Perhaps it would help to put something topical in the title Since most people will see this out of context and have no idea what it is regarding

[mysterydiaz]

This only deals with “one and only”. What about loosing a child???

[ecanet]

Question: I lost my wife to cancer. I just received a copy of her book ‘Grieving Brain’. In several places in the book around p104 and following she refers to her ‘wife’. I normally would not care, but I’m reading her book and I want confirmation that she is a lesbian before I continue reading. I feel no obligation to explain why. >> Listened to her YouTube video on the book. She talked about going to England with her ‘partner’, not a husband, and she obviously didn’t want to say ‘wife’ like on page 104 of her book. I’m a man that lost his wife after 35 years. Nothing she said about mice in a cage in an hour talk was helpful to me so I’m returning her book. It’s interesting all one has to do to earn a Phd from the faculty that came before you - the academic buddy system at work.