Dual Process Model of Grief
The Dual Process Model of Grief is a bereavement framework proposed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut in 1999. It holds that healthy adaptation is not steady progress through grief but oscillation between loss-oriented coping — confronting the death — and restoration-oriented coping — rebuilding a changed life; what goes wrong is rigidity in either direction, not the pain itself. It is a framework rather than a manualized protocol, validated through longitudinal bereavement studies rather than randomized trials. Clinicians use it in individual and group work with grief and loss, over a course that varies with the bereavement, and to answer the question grieving people ask most: am I doing this right?
Related condition topics
These links support exploration. They do not establish that Dual Process Model of Grief is effective or recommended for each condition.
How Dual Process Model of Grief works
Healthy adaptation requires dynamic oscillation between loss-oriented coping (processing grief) and restoration-oriented coping (rebuilding life); rigid fixation in either mode produces complications
Ontology
Grief is not a state to move through but a dynamic oscillation between confronting loss and rebuilding life; pathology emerges from rigidity, not from the pain itself
Therapeutic Voice
"Some days you need to sit with the grief. Other days you need to do your taxes and clean the kitchen. Both are grief work. The back and forth isn't a sign you're doing it wrong: it's exactly how this works."
View of the Person
A coping agent who must oscillate between engaging with loss and rebuilding a changed world: rigidity in either direction is the pathology, not grief itself
Epistemology
Evidence
Framework — unranked
This entry describes a framework. A treatment evidence tier does not apply; its recorded source material remains under review.
Recorded material under review
The existing notes below are retained separately from assessment records. These recorded claims await source checking, including study design, recommendations and numerical estimates.
N/A: foundational grief framework widely referenced in clinical literature
Framework rather than manualized protocol; validated through longitudinal bereavement studies
N/A: theoretical framework with extensive empirical support for oscillation patterns
DPM corrected two assumptions: (1) that grief work is always necessary (some avoidance is adaptive), and (2) that grief follows a linear trajectory. The oscillation model explains why grieving people can laugh at lunch and sob at dinner: both are necessary. Clinically, it helps normalize the 'Am I doing this right?' anxiety many bereaved people feel. Also provides a framework for understanding gender differences in grief (men may default to restoration-orientation, which gets pathologized as avoidance).
Training and certification
Theoretical framework, not protocol. Graduate coursework sufficient
No certification; theoretical model
Graduate coursework + reading
Minimal
Equity & Cultural Adaptations
Clinical cautions and blind spots
Assessment and precautions
Active psychosis, complicated or prolonged grief requiring more than a descriptive framework can offer
Blind spots
Descriptive rather than prescriptive: tells clinicians what healthy grief looks like but less guidance on what to do when someone is stuck; cultural assumptions about individual coping may not map to collective grief practices; as with Worden, pushing a client to oscillate on cue is a misapplication rather than a contraindication, since the model describes movement, it does not prescribe it
Philosophical roots
Lazarus & Folkman (coping as process); Bowlby (attachment and loss); Worden (task model as precursor); regulatory flexibility research (Bonanno); gender role socialization and grief
Compared with other approaches
Test Yourself
How does DPM differ from Worden's Task Model?
Show answer
Worden frames mourning as four tasks to accomplish: implying forward progression. DPM proposes that healthy grieving involves oscillation between confronting the loss (loss-orientation: crying, yearning, ruminating on the deceased) and avoiding it to attend to life changes (restoration-orientation: new roles, identity, distractions). The oscillation itself is the mechanism. People who only do grief work burn out; people who only do restoration never process. Neither orientation alone is healthy.