Complex and Traumatic Loss: Fostering Healing and Resilience, Froma Walsh, the Guilford Press, 2023. 272 pp. With a Variety of Tables and Figures (Paperback), $45

Excerpt

Complex and Traumatic Loss: Fostering Healing and Resilience by Walsh (2023) provides sensitive insight for bereavement professionals to support individuals, couples, and families in healing through resilience. Although there are countless published professional manuals on bereavement, Walsh uniquely presents a collection of her own and others’ experiences in exploring and treating grief, consistently highlighting strength in hardship. The ideal audience is anyone who engages with grief in a professional context or studies bereavement in a graduate course. Walsh urges the importance of competencies in addressing grief because too many professionals are unequipped to handle this fundamental human experience. Walsh describes the book as up to date on practice and provides references when introducing a topic or discussing the prevalence of some grief-related experiences. Oriented on the practice of psychotherapy, theory and research are woven in, but not central. The book is structured with an overview before delving into standard challenges surrounding loss, finally expanding on losses coated with complexity or trauma. …