For the grief process to proceed to a better outcome for the mourner, there must be social support and connections to bolster the mourner in their time of need. For a lot of people, however, this is not possible.

The idea of disenfranchised grief was first published in 1989. It is defined as grief that cannot be openly acknowledged or supported by society. The first book identified three types of disenfranchised grief: relationships that were not allowed or appreciated, losses that were not acknowledged, or vulnerable groups like people with intellectual disabilities or dementia. In 2002, a second volume was released that added stigmatized deaths, like ones caused by AIDS or suicide, and the way the griever works through their grief. The most common disenfranchised losses, which can include nondeath losses, are the loss of a loved one, loss of kinship, social injustices, microaggressions, loss of community, loss of financial security, divorce, incarceration, healthcare disparities, minimal access to technology, loss of educational opportunities, loss of innocence, and loss of social safety (from Libios and Hudspeth, 2023).

When people experience disenfranchised grief, they may have a dilemma: suffer quietly almost always leading to overwhelm or suffer the outcome of perceived social failure.

An example of relationships that were not allowed is the relationships of same-sex individuals who are not married. The surviving partner may not have their feelings supported, and they may also lose their loved one to the legal system that allows the dead partner’s family of birth to keep them from funerary planning or the services themselves. A short film displaying this is Vàmonos (2015).

Losses that are not acknowledged may be something like someone not receiving corporate bereavement leave due to a death not being considered ‘close’ enough. Refugees and other immigrants may not be able to travel to their place of origin for funerary practices dictated by their culture because of paperwork.

Other examples of stigmatized death include some homicides, substance abuse, abortion, and deaths caused by law enforcement.

Issues with how someone grieves can come from cultural differences between majority and minority populations. People must possess cultural humility, a deep ability to empathize and learn about another’s culture and how it is affected by the majority culture, to understand the grieving practices of another culture.

A related term to disenfranchised grief is ‘empathic failure’ wherein the response to the griever invalidates the bereaved.

Nonfinite losses, also called nondeath losses or symbolic losses, do not involve a death but can be just as devastating. They can have severe effects on grievers’ mental, physical, and emotional states just as deaths do. These losses are continuous and ongoing, preventing normal developmental expectations and leading to a feeling of loss of self. Chronic sorrow may be involved. Some specific nonfinite losses include discrimination, oppression, and marginalization – an example is the patriarchal hierarchy influencing women’s education, careers, marriages, reproductive rights, and sexuality. Another set of examples is seen regularly in the Black American community: loss of freedom, police brutality, negative police contact, and loss of voice.

Nonfinite losses are often seen as symptoms of anxiety or depression, so they are not something that is usually processed. Those bereaved in these situations may have the same symptoms of prolonged grief, namely longing or yearning, feeling stunned, trouble accepting what happened, and avoidance of reminders of the event. These are seen as mental illness rather than a grief situation.

People experiencing nonfinite losses may feel that they’re not allowed to grieve, something leading to disenfranchisement.

A related idea might be ambiguous losses wherein a person is physically but not psychologically present, as seen in dementia, or when they are physically absent but psychologically present as in immigration, abandonment, or adoption. The cause of these losses is external, and these losses can become disenfranchised because people expect survivors to move on. Ambiguous losses can cause hopelessness, desperation, and despair.