Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, 4th Edition

This book presents the author’s most recent thinking on bereavement drawn from extensive research, clinical work, and the best of the new literature. It looks at recent controversies in the field including the best way to understand complicated bereavement and the efficacy of grief counseling and therapy. The book presents the vital distinction between grief and trauma, and highlights different intervention approaches for each. After presenting a discussion on attachment, loss, and grief, the book deals with the understanding of the mourning process. “Mourning” indicates the process that occurs after a loss, while “grief” refers to the personal experience of the loss. A chapter on the mediators of mourning helps clinicians to understand what accounts for individual differences in adapting to the death of a loved one. The overall goal of grief counseling is to help the survivor adapt to the loss of a loved one and be able to adjust to a new reality without him or her. People who have had abnormal grief reactions in the past have a higher probability of having an abnormal reaction in the present. Complicated mourning manifests in several forms such as pathological grief, unresolved grief, complicated grief, or chronic grief. Grief therapy helps patients to explore their fantasies of what it would be like to complete the grieving or what would be in it for them. Losses from suicide, sudden death, sudden infant death, miscarriage and stillbirth, abortion, anticipated death, and AIDS can all create distinct problems for the survivors.