Specialism
Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy
Grief, for most people, softens over time. For some, life remains at a standstill even years after a loss. Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy (PGDT) is a structured, evidence-based 16-session treatment developed at Columbia University for grief that has become stuck.
Is PGDT right for you?
How to know
Prolonged Grief Disorder was added to the ICD-11 in 2018 and to the DSM-5-TR in 2022. It is distinct from depression and from PTSD. The diagnosis applies when, more than six months after a bereavement (twelve months in DSM), grief is still intense and interfering with day-to-day life — often in some combination of:
- A persistent yearning for the person who died
- Difficulty accepting the death, even when the facts are not in question
- Feeling that part of yourself died too
- Avoidance of reminders of the death, or avoidance of moving on from it
- Difficulty re-engaging with relationships, work, or the future
If any of this sounds familiar — and especially if you have been told "it's just been a long time" — it is worth a conversation.
What PGDT involves
Structured, but not impersonal
PGDT pairs a manualised sequence of work with the relational depth that good grief therapy requires. Across roughly 16 sessions we will:
- Build a shared understanding of the loss and where you are stuck.
- Develop a daily grief monitoring practice — short, low-effort, illuminating.
- Work through the story of the death, deliberately and at a pace you can tolerate.
- Reconnect with what mattered to you before, and what might matter to you next.
- Address any specific avoidance that is keeping the grief frozen.
- Plan for relapse, anniversaries, and the long arc of carrying a loss without being defined by it.
Why work with me on this
Columbia-trained, research-active
I trained in PGDT at the Columbia University Center for Prolonged Grief (the institution where the protocol was developed) in 2020. I am a co-author on the 2025 Cambridge University Press paper An evaluation of a pilot high-intensity treatment pathway for prolonged grief reactions in a Devon NHS Talking Therapies service (The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist) — one of the first UK evaluations of PGDT in routine care. PGDT is not the only grief work I do, but it is the work for which I am best known.
Practicalities
What to expect
- 16 sessions · weekly · 50 minutes · online
- Fee: £140 per session
- Free 20-minute consultation to determine fit
Ready to talk?
Book a free consultation about PGDT
The consultation is 20 minutes, free, and has no expectation that you commit to a full course.