M Katherine Shear is the Marion E Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, New York, USA, and the founding Director of the Center for Complicated Grief. Dr Shear is a clinical researcher who first worked in anxiety and depression. For the past two decades, she has focused on understanding and treating people who experience persistent intense grief, which is now an official diagnosis called Prolonged Grief Disorder in the DSM-5. She developed and tested Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy, a short-term, strength-based intervention that helps foster adaptation to loss and confirmed its efficacy in three large studies. The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia School of Social Work is dedicated to improving the lives of bereaved people by increasing knowledge and understanding of grief through research, training and community outreach. Since its inception in 2013, it has trained >1000 mental-health professionals in how to implement evidence-based screening, assessment, diagnosis and treatment procedures with bereaved clients. Its public outreach programme aims to increase awareness of complicated grief/prolonged grief disorder and help sufferers, their family members and friends understand this problem and learn that help is available.