Grief and Depression

Within months of losing Hannah, Ryan and Abby, people started asking me if I was going to take medication for my depression. I often heard this from well-meaning friends and I began to wonder if I needed medication. I knew I was sad and that my sadness wasn't like anything I had ever experienced before and I knew that how I felt certainly seemed to match the little I knew about depression, but taking medication didn't seem right to me, even during the darkest days of my grief. It somehow seemed like I would be denying myself the right to grieve, which I seemed to innately know that even though it was difficult, it was something I had to do.

However, as more time when by and I wasn't feeling better, I realized that if I wanted to piece my life back together (and I did) that I needed help, so I made an appointment with a counsellor. At my first session, I asked her this question: "Is what I'm feeling normal for someone whose children have died?" I wanted to know-I needed to know-that my feelings were normal. My counsellor helped me understand that, yes, what I was feeling was completely normal because I was experiencing acute grief and that it is a natural and healthy (albeit painful) process of grieving. She explained to me that losing a child (or children) is the worst loss a person can experience, ever and that acute grief lasts much longer than most people realize. When polled, most people say that it takes 2-3 months to recover from the loss of a loved one (any loved one, not necessarily the loss of your child/ren) but studies have shown that most people grieve deeply for at least a year after someone has died.

I am not an expert on grief or depression. I know very little about either, with the exception of my own experiences with losing loved ones. However, I find it sad that so many women are told they need medication after their child/ren die, when in truth, they would benefit more from counselling, support groups and support in general. I have no clinical knowledge about either topic, but I have to believe that it's important to go through the stages of grieving in order to start the process of healing. And yet so many people are denied this right by their family, their friends and even the professionals that they seek help from. I can't help but wonder why this is?
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Please don't feel like I am anti-medication, because I am not. I think medication can and does have a place in many situations and perhaps grief is one of them, but I think it's often used as a first attempt instead of a last resort in helping people-especially women-who are experiencing grief. If I have offended you, I am very sorry-that was not my intent in this post. I am just trying to understand why grief is so often confused with depression.