Grief Therapy: Nature and application Essay

Introduction Bereavement is viewed as a normal expound of human experience and considered as easily as a merry aspect to the human state. M some(prenominal) of those who experience the loss of a love wizard receive support and cargon from significant others and friends. A b ar(a) number of bereaved sight face critical and at propagation lasting consequences while the rest of the majority manages to prevail over their brokenheartedness in the course of beat. Those who find this time of mourning and mourning disabling therefore need professional therapeutic help (Corr, 1999).A trade of those Psychotherapeutic interventions for bereavement differ extensively, and comprise individual and group techniques. Among the numerous intervention programs which were devised to diminish the anguish and di strive connected with mourning is sorrowfulness therapy and has been critical reviewed for its military strength. This paper outlines the use of rue therapy, the statistics surrou nding its use, such as how paramount sorrowfulness therapy is, the populations which utilize it and to what degree it helps resolve issues and other relevant matters to sadness therapy.Discussion Who uses wo therapy? Social proceeder Dennis M. Reilly states, We do non necessarily need a whole clean profession of . . . bereavement counselors. We do need more(prenominal) thought, sensitivity, and activity concerning this issue on the break up of the vivacious professional groups that is, clergy, funeral directors, family therapists, nurses, social workers and physicians (Worden 1991, p. 5). Trained therapists whitethorn be physicians, junior infirmary or clinical medical students. Barclay et al (2003) were able to arena general practiti peerlessrs in Wales to ascertain how well prep ared they are to heraldic bearing for the dying. It is in all likeliness then that although there are some(prenominal) available professional therapists, with different support groups spro uting these days, help for the sufferer is no longer elusive. Where is ruefulness therapy conducted and in what format?heartbreak therapy by and large is carried out in a constrained area (usually an office setting). These areas may be set(p) in hospitals (for both cons and their families and for outpatients), psychical health clinics, churches, synagogues, chemical dependency inpatient and out-patient programs, schools, universities, funeral home afterwardscare programs, employee assistance programs, and programs that serve chronically ill or terminally ill someones. Additional sites might include adult or jejune service locations for criminal offenders. Private practice (when a counselor or therapist works for herself) is a nonher opportunity to fork out direct customer services (Barclay et al., 2003). When Is sorrowfulness charge or Therapy Needed? Based on studies by many experts, including John Jordan, ruefulness discuss and trouble therapy techniques are put to t est and redesigned by new research. In their article print in the journal finish Studies, Selby Jacobs, Carolyn Mazure, and Holly Prigerson state, The death of a family member or intimate exposes the afflicted person to a higher risk for s invariablyal types of psychiatric disorders. These include major depressions, panic disorders, generalized anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders and increased alcohol use and abuse (Jacobs, Mazure, and Prigerson 2000, p. 185). They encourage the development of a new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) category authorise Traumatic Grief, which would facilitate early detection and intervention for those bereaved persons change by this disorder.Researcher Phyllis Silverman is concerned that messages dealing with the resolution of grief, especially a new category entitled Traumatic Grief, may do more harm to the mourner. She states, If this initiative succeeds (Traumatic Grief), it will have manners-threatenin g repercussions for how we consider the bereavedthey become persons who are suffering from a psychiatric diagnose or a condition eligible for reimbursed services from mental health professionals (Silverman 2001). She feels the new DSM category may help provide the handiness of more services, further believes it is important to consider what it means when predictable, expected aspects of the life cycle experience are called disorders that require expert care.When one thinks of grief counselors and grief therapists one is again reminded that grief and bereavement is a process, non an event. How do persons cope and adapt? Grief counseling or grief therapy intervention can be useful at any refer in the grief process, before and/or after a death. Grief counseling and therapy do non only begin after death. therefore again, is this actually accurate? According to clinician, researcher and writer Therese Rando, Anticipatory grief is the phenomenon encompassing the process of mourning, move, interaction, planning, and psychosocial reorganization that are stimulated and begun in part in response to the awareness of the impending loss of a love one and the recognition of associated losses in the past, present, and future.It is seldom explicitly con moved, except the truly therapeutic experience of anticipatory grief mandates a tenuous balance among the mutually conflicting demands of simultaneously holding onto, letting go of, and drawing closer to the dying patient. (Rando 2000, p. 29) Based also on in-depth studies make by Schut and Stroebe, grief therapy, when applied soon after bereavement may not alleviate but instead render therapy ineffective or else even interfere with the normal grieving manner (p.141,2005).. These scholars further put intervention is more effective for those with more complicated forms of grief.This is further corroborate from expert psychotherapist-researcher Worden who believes grief therapy is most proper in conditions that fall into terce types (1) The complicated grief reaction is manifested as lengthened grief (2) the grief reaction manifests itself finished some masked somatic or behavioral symptom or (3) the reaction is manifested by an exaggerated grief response. hatful experiencing this kind of bereavement may not be that easy to recognize hence diagnostic techniques are crucial tools for the practitioner (Zisook, 2000). Grief therapy is not for everyone and is not a cure for the grieving process, Worden concludes. Recent investigations as to the energy of therapy or interventions were made in response to criticisms made a decade ago by Robak (p.701-702, 1999). He held that the bereavement research field failed to provide empirical studies on psychotherapy and counseling. According to Schut and Stroebe (p.142), researchers must determine that the mental remedies or therapies for bereaved persons have been demonstrated to be successful in controlled research with a delineated population. Howev er, in the area of grief counseling and therapy, well-established interventions (i.e. those well-described and transferable, with treatment manual, tested, replicated and found effective, and accompanied by indications and counter-indications) are not available.This is mostly based on stringent criteria adopted for dexterity studies (p.143). This implies that sources for the use of grief therapy, its efficacy and who practices this treatment program is therefore limited. As Schut and Stroebe (p.146) declare although micro steps in the right direction are now being taken, this fundamental message still holds to create a body of unfathomed scientific knowledge , the research agenda for the future must develop the number of well-designed and executed empirical studies on the efficacy of bereavement intervention. tax deduction and Conclusion There is a major new Report on Bereavement and Grief Research made by the Center for the publicity of Health which settled, A growing bod y of evidence indicates that interventions with adults who are not experiencing complicated grief cannot be regarded as beneficial in hurt of diminishing grief-related symptoms. The report indicated that there is very little support for the effectiveness of interventions like crisis teams that call on family members within hours of a loss, self-help groups that seek to cheer friendships, efforts to render the bereaved ways to work through grief and a host of other therapeutic approaches believed to help the bereaved (The in the altogether York Times, Oct.9, 2006).Counseling and therapy are opportunities for those who seek support to help move from only coping to being transformed by the lossto find a new normal in their lives and to know that after a loved one dies one does not remove that person from his or her life, but kinda learns to develop a new relationship with the person now that he or she has died. In A Time to Grieve Mediations for Healing after the Death of a Loved One (1994) the writer Carol Crandall states, You foundert heal from the loss of a loved one because time passes you heal because of what you do with the time (Staudacher 1994, p. 92). Even when bereavement therapy is needed, however, the benefit may depend on the approach used. For example, most bereavement groups focus on emotional issues.These are most helpful to women. But men tend to grieve differently, and they are more likely to benefit from an approach that focuses on their processes of thinking. Caring friends and relatives often coax those who have just suffered the loss of a loved one to seek professional help, either by taking part in a bereavement group or through individual psychotherapy. But Dr. Robert A. Neimeyer, professor of psychology at the University of Memphis, editor of the scientific journal Death Studies and chairman of the committee that prepared the new report, utter in an interview Not everyone requires the same thing. Dealing with grief is not a one si ze fits all proposition.Moreover, Dr. George Bonanno, psychologist at Columbias Teachers College, has found that the bereaved who naturally avoid emotions should not be agonistic to confront grief. Even three years later, such people show no traumatic consequences as a result of suppressing it, he reported. In more than half the cases, Dr. Neimeyer explained, far more useful than therapy to the bereaved are the empathy and emotional and physical support that friends, relatives and caring people in the approximation and at work can provide in the first weeks and months after a death.Only when grieving is complicated intense and protracted, associated with deep unrelieved depression and interfering with normal enjoyments, life tasks or an ability to work is there a clear-cut need for grief therapy, Dr. Neimeyer said. Dr. Hansson of Tulsa observes that many people who experience complicated grief have neither faced their losses nor allowed themselves to work through the emotions th at naturally ensue. If, months down the road, a bereaved person is still grieving intensely, therapy should be sought, Dr. Neimeyer said. Among the hallmarks of complicated grief he listed are intrusive thoughts about the deceased, recurrent images of how the person died, a continual chase to reconnect with the deceased, corrosive loneliness, feeling purposeless and empty, difficulty believing the death ever happened and feeling that the world cannot be trusted.Treating people with these symptoms is important because their unresolved grief can have serious, even life-threatening health consequences, including high stemma pressure, stroke, heart attack, substance abuse and suicide. Such people can literally die of a broken heart, Dr. Neimeyer said. Perhaps the most revealing study of the varying courses of bereavement was undertaken by Dr. Bonanno, Dr. Camille B. Wortman, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and six co-authors. They evaluated 1,532 peo ple (all married, with at least one partner of each couple over age 65), then followed them for up to eight years. When a spouse died, they assessed the bereavement experiences of the widow or widowman over time. This is what they found 1) Forty-six percent of the survivors were resilient. They experienced transitory distress, but scored low in depression both before the death and at 6 and 18 months after losing their spouses. 2) Eleven percent followed a green grief course, with rather severe depression at 6 months that had generally disappeared by 18 months. 3) Sixteen percent, who were not initially depressed, nonetheless were devastated afterward, experiencing prolonged depression.4) Eight percent were chronically depressed beforehand, with the depression worsened by the death. 5)But 10 percent who had been depressed before the death did very well afterward, perhaps because they had been in bad marriages or were relieved from the burdens of taking care of ill spouses. 6) The remaining 9 percent did not fit into any category. , people may require very different therapy or no therapy at all. The available evidence therefore, points out that interventions for individuals at risk for complications of bereavement may result in some benefit for a unmindful while.However, the findings are inconsistent and they vary based on the factors such as the gender of participants and whether they were first screened before participating in the studies, which appears to increase the likelihood that the interventions would be successful (e.g. Schut et al., 2001). The concepts of complicated grief are fairly youthful in bereavement research and this is the reason that no controlled studies exist that pertains at one time to its treatment (Jacobs & Prigerson, 2000, p.479).ReferencesCasarett D, Kutner JS, Abrahm J, et al Life after death a operable approach togrief and bereavement. Ann Intern Med 134 (3) 208-15, 2001.Corr, Charles A. Children, Adolescents, and Death Myth s, Realities and Challenges. Death Studies 23 (1999) 443463.Bonano GA, Boerner C, Wortman B. resilient or at Risk? 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