Washington: A new study revealed that sadness after the death of a spouse is usually misdiagnosed by the doctors as depression, even though it only causes depression-like symptoms.

The study conducted at ‘KU’, Leuven analysed the behavior of recently widowed elderly people and observed that spousal loss causes a very small number of specific depression symptoms, like loneliness, and these initial symptoms of depression, then, trigger a specific network of subsequent depression symptoms.

Dr. Eiko Fried, lead author of the study, suggested that instead of targeting depression in general, targeting key symptoms specifically, such as loneliness, might prevent the activation of other symptoms in a person's psychopathological network and prevent the complete development of depression.

Fried claims that these symptoms have been a major topic of debate recently, and it is concluded that many people do indeed exhibit a normal grief response after losing their partner, which is often misdiagnosed as pathological depression.

The study is published in the journal of Abnormal Psychology.