Joe Biden, grief and cognitive decline

A study indicated that individual prolonged grief syndrome showed a decrease in global cognitive function over time.

There are widespread concerns that Joe Biden is suffering from cognitive decline (see: Biden's age).

According to Politico:

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The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, CNN, the Atlantic, the Associated Press, Slate and just about every other.. outlet you can name has crossed the ageism line to ask the “too old” question in recent articles about Joe Biden, age 76, often in the headline itself. ...after tallying Biden’s repeated stumbles, miscues and mental lapses, journalists tend to retreat from calling Biden too infirm to run the White House. The greater press taboo, it seems, isn’t asking the question about Biden but answering it.

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Matthew Walther, a national correspondent for The Week, wrote about Biden's age:

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These days, Biden is confused about everything and everyone virtually all the time... He routinely says things that are absolute gibberish... These are not ordinary slips of the tongue. They are signs of cognitive decline that will be familiar to anyone who, like me, spends a good deal of time in the company of people who are roughly Biden's age."

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Politico in an article entited How Grief Became Joe Biden’s ‘Superpower’ indicates:

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There is no person in American politics today whose life has been so shaped by loss and grief. The long arc of Biden’s career is all but bracketed by tragedy. In 1972, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident; in 2015, one of his two sons who had survived the crash died of a rare strain of brain cancer. These wretched tentpoles are not only tragedies the 76-year-old Biden has had to endure. They influenced major decisions he made about his political career—first, his priorities in the Senate; later, his decision to opt out of the presidential election of 2016. And they defined him as a person as well, according to longtime friends, former aides and veteran politicos in his home state of Delaware.

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The Washington Post states concerning Biden: "In a candid 2012 speech to military families and friends who had lost a loved one in action, Biden spoke about the anger, crisis of faith and wounds that don't really ever heal."

Bereavement can result in unresolved/prolonged grief, which is often called prolonged grief disorder (PGD).

The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in a journal article entitled Prolonged Grief and Cognitive Decline: A Prospective Population-Based Study in Middle-Aged and Older Persons

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Compared with the reference group, participants with PGD showed a decrease in global cognitive function, MMSE scores, and World learning test (immediate and delayed) over time. Participants with normal grief did not show a stronger cognitive decline in any of cognitive tests than the reference group.

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