Joy R. Samuels – 2-Day Grief Treatment Certification Course: Evidence-Based Strategies for Helping Clients Make Meaning After Loss

Outline

Types of Grief & Their Implications for Treatment

• Disenfranchised grief
• Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder
• Traumatic bereavement
• Complicated Grief
  • Common trajectories for grief
  • Recognize complicated grief
  • Risk factors for complicated grief
  • Treatment Interventions
• Types of Loss & Their Impact on Grieving
  • Parental loss
  • Child loss
  • Widowhood
  • Non-death losses

Assessment: Intake Considerations for Grieving Clients

• Current conceptualization models
• Recognize different expressions of grief
• Factors impacting the grief experience
• Assess for depression and suicide ideation
• Differentiate between depression, grief, & PTSD
• Use of Adjustment Disorder diagnosis with grief clients
• Determine how the client understands their grief narrative
• Persistent complex bereavement disorder
• DSM-5® changes to Major Depressive Disorder
• Take home assessment tools

Cultural Considerations for Grief Treatment

• Cultural factors affecting expression of grief
• Impact on mourning practices
• Culture’s impact on death anxiety & meaning of life
• Determine where the identity emphasis lies
• Cultural values regarding emotional expression and disclosure
• The impact of society on grief

Grief Treatment: Interventions & Strategies to Improve Clinical Outcomes

• Assist clients with expressing their pain
• Integrate a new inner image of the deceased
• Client self-assessment strategies for coping
• Foster client relaxation skills
• Let the client lead: Starting point, story, & stopping point
• Cultivate acceptance
• Elicit emotional availability in clients
• Give clients “permission” to not share stories
• Focus on planning – not positivity
• Develop healthy grief rituals
• Target guilt due to stopping grief rituals
• Build a bridge between memories, current behaviors, & underlying values
• Help clients accept the finality of the death
• Navigate the treatment of multiple losses

In-Session Activities: On-the-Spot Interventions to Facilitate Healing

• The client “influence of loss” chart
• Use loving kindness meditation to build self-compassion in clients
• ”Who am I?” exercise
• Utilize client letters to self

Grief Across the Lifespan: Help Your Clients Heal at Any Developmental Stage

• Developmental considerations & milestones related to loss reactions for:
  • Children
  • Adolescents
  • Early adulthood
  • Middle adulthood
  • Later adulthood

Grief & the Family: Guide Families Through Healthy Grieving

• Family systems theory: Family influences on individual grief
• Variables that complicate family adaptation
• Strategies to guide family adaptation to loss
• Develop respect for different grieving styles
• The role of gender norms
• ”Family coat of arms” activity

Professional Issues: Ethical Considerations for Working with Grieving Clients, Their Families, & the Terminally Ill

• Ethical dilemmas that confront the terminally ill
• Ethical principles of end-of-life decisions
• The clinician’s role in addressing psychological suffering & needs of the terminally ill
• Impact of cause of death on social isolation
• Identify the core values and principles of professional ethical behavior
• Boundaries of professional competence