What's the point of grief?

It focuses on the psychological connectedness of grief, looking at the quality of bondings that are made during the course of our lives.

Grief, and even the behaviour of babies in the absence of parents suggests it is not just a mental experience, but has physiological effects, like raising the level of the stress hormone cortisol in our bodies.

Neuroscience can measure the brain in grief, showing that the region nucleus accumbens lights up when we are close to our loved ones, and also if we lose them.

Grief can be for all sorts of reasons, not just losing a loved one. Any world-shifting event that affects us directly or a traumatic event in our lives can shatter and disorient us. This is known as the assumptive world theory.