# Is grief natural? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 4, 2020, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013 "2020-04-04T00:22:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aaronhernandez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@aaronhernandez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aaronhernandez)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2020, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/1 "2020-04-04T00:22:26Z")
I’ve always wondered if murderers of their own families/friends would grieve if they died not from their own hands but through an accident or through being murdered by someone else. If so, is that not contradictory. One would expect them then to have guilt and pain over murder but they don’t. Does that mean murderers are mentally ill? ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2020, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/2 "2020-04-04T00:29:10Z")
I think if you hate someone enough to murder them - and you’re not suffering from a mental illness - you are unlikely to grieve their death whether they died at your hand or not. However there is a deeper debate here - could we consider ANYONE who commits murder mentally ill to some extent? ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/3 "2020-04-07T13:51:31Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#): > > I think if you hate someone enough to murder them - and you’re not suffering from a mental illness - you are unlikely to grieve their death whether they died at your hand or not. > > However there is a deeper debate here - could we consider ANYONE who commits murder mentally ill to some extent? Only if you believe that human beings don’t naturally and normally murder each other. That’s not true. They do indeed and have throughout history and prehistory. Most often males killing males of other tribes and groups, but let us also include infanticide, ritual sacrifice, and male violence against ‘unprotected’ women. As a species we are one of the most violent toward each other. Social mammals all grieve the loss of a society or a family member – dolphins, elephants, wolves, apes, and many other less glamorous species. The more intelligent birds also do. Mammalian mothers show grief for the loss of their dependent children. And this is sorrow we can ‘read’ – we are not so able to detect the emotions of living things not as akin to us. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/4 "2020-04-07T14:38:19Z")
Murderers of close family members often _do_ grieve. But yes, there’s something wrong with people who commit murder. I don’t think that anyone would dispute that, and it doesn’t take an argument involving grief to come to that conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/5 "2020-04-07T15:22:32Z")
There are all sorts of reasons that people murder, if or why a murderer grieves varies with those reasons. I can’t prove grief is natural, but since we see it in other animals besides humans then it would seem to be a very natural emotion. We all can feel something from even minor losses, the loss of a person with a close relationship is certainly going to induce grief in people. I’ve said before that much of classic literature is based on grief. So it’s natural, and there is no logic to explain the relationship between grief and murder. And yes, all murderers are mentally ill, just like all people, for different values of mentally ill. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2020, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-grief-natural/851013/6 "2020-04-08T18:56:24Z")
I think it would depend a lot on the circumstances. For example I could see a domestic abuser grieving for his wife, thinking that she “forced” him to kill her by cheating behind his back. On the other hand pushing mama down the stairs so you can get the inheritance, probably won’t require a whole lot of grieving.