Grief is a Public Health Emergency
Grief is not a niche - It happens to us all.
Earlier this year, two public tragedies have made headlines—and both, heartbreakingly, point to the same under-reported issue: unsupported grief. In February, a man entered the ICU at UPMC Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania and opened fire. His wife had died in hospice there the night before. Grief was identified as his motive for the shooting.
In April, at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu festival, 11 people were killed in a violent attack. The perpetrator had recently lost his brother to murder. His mother had attempted suicide after the loss. These are extreme examples, yes. But they are not isolated.
When grief is ignored, it doesn’t go away. It goes underground.
When Grief is Untreated, the Damage Multiplies
The tragedies is Pennsylvania and British Columbia are reminders of what can happen when grief is unsupported and swept aside. Thank fully, most people who grieve don’t resort to violence, but that doesn’t mean the damage, and those suffering with it unsupported, isn’t widespread.
Grief takes a toll—not just emotionally, but physically, socially, and economically. When people are grieving, we see:
- Elevated risks of depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes (O'Connor, 2019)
- Increased suicidal behaviors and suicide—1 in 4 youth suicides are recently bereaved (Rodway et al., 2022)
- Increased substance use, incarceration, and academic failure (Parisi et al., 2019; Leach et al., 2008; Oosterhoff et al., 2018)
- Lost workdays, increased accidents, and workplace turnover (Gilbert & Kelloway, 2021)
And in the communities where grief support is least accessible—rural areas, marginalized populations, and non-English speakers—the impacts are even more severe. The very people most likely to experience loss are often least likely to receive support.
We Don’t Just Need Empathy. We Need Infrastructure.
Despite the compelling data, grief support continues to be underfunded, misunderstood, fragmented, and inconsistently delivered.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Across North America and beyond, there are thousands of trained grief counselors, social workers and thanatologists who know how to help people navigate loss. And now, we also have scalable, clinically sound tools that can ensure nobody has to grieve alone. In The Lancet Public Health, Dr. Wendy Lichtenthal and colleagues made a compelling case: Bereavement support must be part of our public health infrastructure.
Not an Afterthought. Not a luxury.
We need grief support that is:
- Evidence-informed
- Inclusive and culturally competent
- Embedded early
- Scalable and accessible to all
We have the expertise. What we lack is the infrastructure to deliver it.
This is Why I Started Help Texts
In 2002, my husband died by suicide. The grief was overwhelming. Frightening, in fact. Friends and family wanted to help, but didn’t know how. I was lucky to have people who showed up—but grief was still lonely and confusing, and I struggled to find support that made sense for me.
At the time, I had 20 years’ experience building mobile and web tools to improve connection—from suicide prevention to caregiver coordination. What I saw was a massive gap. So, on a flight home from yet another funeral, I mapped out the idea for text-based grief support. That’s how Help Texts began.
Today, we deliver clinically sound grief support in 50 U.S. states, across 57 countries, and in 27 languages. Our messages are personalized based on age, relationship, cause of death, and time since loss—and delivered for a full year. We were the first in the world to publish research on grief-informed texting. We are now proving, at scale, that texting grief support is smart, cost-effective public health.
Text-based Grief Support is a Simple, Smart Public Health Option
Text messaging is already used in public health campaigns for everything from smoking cessation to vaccine reminders. It’s cost-effective. It has a high read rate. It scales. So it makes perfect sense that text-based grief support works, too. Help Texts’ published data shows that 95% of subscribers find our messages helpful in their grief. Just as important: the messages make people feel more supported. It’s even higher among men—who are often underrepresented in grief care programs.
Our texting is already saving lives. It could be saving more.
Still, bereavement gets nowhere near the funding it needs. Most funding flows to expensive, hard-to-scale therapy programs—despite the fact that only 10% of grievers need therapy (Aoun et al., 2012). The other 90% need adequate community support or care from family and friends.
Text support—delivered to both grievers and their family and friend networks—is clinically sound, affordable, and proven to work.
This isn’t just care. It’s a public health intervention.
What We’re Calling For
Grieving people are everywhere.
Support isn’t.
That must change.
We are asking healthcare systems, policymakers, and funders to stop treating grief like a footnote. Unlike other public health issues, we know the exact moment someone becomes bereaved:
- When a death is registered
- When funeral paperwork is filed
- When Social Security, the IRS, or a coroner’s office reaches out
These moments are touch points for care. We could use them—today—to:
- Integrate bereavement care into public health planning
- Fund and scale interventions like text-based support
- Recognize grief as a key moment to intervene—when people are vulnerable, but open to help
Because when we fail to support grieving people, just as we’ve seen in Pennsylvania and British Columbia, and even when we forget that someone we are close to or working with is grieving, the cost isn’t just personal.
It impacts us all.
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About Help Texts
Help Texts is the world's leading clinically sound, scalable, bereavement intervention. We deliver affordable, multilingual support globally via text message for all of life's toughest moments. With extraordinary acceptability (95%) and 6-month retention (90%) rates, Help Texts' light-weight solution makes it easy for employers, providers, payers, and others to improve health and community outcomes, while also realizing significant cost savings for those in their care.
Life can be hard. Getting support shouldn't have to be. 💙 Help Texts is proud to be delivering personalized, expert grief and mental health support in 59 countries and 28 languages. All year long.