Studies suggest that symptoms of traumatic grief constitute a distinct syndrome worthy of diagnosis.

A consensus conference aimed to develop and test a criteria set for traumatic grief.

The expert panel proposed consensus criteria for traumatic grief. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses tested the performance of the proposed criteria on 306 widowed respondents at seven months post-loss.

ROC analyses indicated that three of four separation distress symptoms (e.g. yearning, searching, loneliness) had to be endorsed as at least ‘sometimes true’ and four of the final eight traumatic distress symptoms (e.g. numbness, disbelief, distrust, anger, sense of futility about the future) had to be endorsed as at least ‘mostly true’ to yield a sensitivity of 0.93 and a specificity of 0.93 for a diagnosis of traumatic grief.

Preliminary analyses suggest the consensus criteria for traumatic grief have satisfactory operating characteristics, and point to directions for further refinement of the criteria set.

Although subjective ratings of health have been shown to be accurate predictors of physical health outcomes, there is little research on the association between subjective emotional health (SEH) and psychiatric outcomes.

This paper utilises data from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study to explore the relationship between baseline SEH and the risk for major depression in the next year. Both recurrent and incident episodes of depression are outcomes of interest.

The age- and gender-adjusted relationship between SEH and depression is quite significant, and remains so after adjusting for other factors associated with major depression. The more positive the SEH rating, the lower the risk of an episode of depression in the next year.

Some possible explanations for this association are explored, including possible confounders that were not accounted for and the possibility that SEH ratings pose an independent risk for major depression.