2-Day Grief Treatment Certification Course: Evidence-Based Strategies for Helping Clients Make Meaning After Loss

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Faculty

Joy R. Samuels, DMin, LPC-MHSP, NCC Related seminars and products

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Objectives

1. Differentiate relevant theories and models describing the physical and psychosocial effects of loss, grief, and mourning on the individual and family system and their clinical implications.
2. Determine how to plan and implement appropriate assessments, interventions and strategies to help individuals and families cope with loss and grief to improve treatment outcomes.
3. Perform a clinical assessment to inform the clinician’s choice of best treatment interventions for the reduction of symptoms of Prolonged Grief Disorder, disenfranchised grief, or Persistent Prolonged Grief Disorder.
4. Differentiate potential loss events occurring throughout the lifespan, including non-death situations, to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
5. Analyze the ethnic, gender, and cultural factors that affect individual responses to loss-related situations as it relates to case conceptualization.
6. Evaluate factors that influence normal and complicated reactions to dying and grief in clients.
7. Determine one’s own cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions to death, dying, and bereavement, as it relates to professional practice with clients experiencing grief and loss.
8. Differentiate theories and models of individual, cultural, couple, family, and community resilience in relation to assessment and treatment planning.
9. Analyze the efficacy of various treatment interventions for complicated grief to improve clinical outcomes.
10. Determine the ethical and legal issues in end-of-life decisions, such as suffering, dying, and choice, and their clinical implications.
11. Utilize clinical strategies to assist grieving clients in the move from flight or fight to social engagement in session.
12. Utilize the co-regulating pathways of the social engagement system in session as an approach to managing symptoms of Prolonged Grief Disorder.
     

Outline

Types of Grief & Their Implications for Treatment

• Explain historical and current relevant theories and models describing the physical and psychosocial effect of loss, grief, and mourning on the individual and family system.
• Compare factors that influence normal and complicated reactions to dying and grief.
• Disenfranchised grief
• Persistent Prolonged Grief Disorder
• Traumatic Bereavement
• Prolonged Grief Disorder
  • Common trajectories for grief
  • Recognize Prolonged Grief Disorder
  • Risk factors for Prolonged Grief Disorder
  • Treatment Interventions
• Types of Loss & Their Impact on Grieving
  • Parental loss
  • Child loss
  • Widowhood
  • Non-death losses

Grief & the Family: Guide Families Through Healthy Grieving

• Differentiate potential loss events occurring throughout the lifespan, including non-death situations, and complicated bereavement.
• Identify theories and models of individual, couple, and family resilience.
  • 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
  • Developmental considerations & milestones related to loss reactions for:
    • Children
    • Adolescents
    • Early adulthood
    • Middle adulthood
    • Later adulthood

Multicultural Considerations for Grief Treatment

• Analyze the ethnic, gender, and cultural factors that affect responses to loss-related situations.
• Increase awareness of one’s own beliefs, assumptions, and biases and how they may influence the establishment and maintenance of therapeutic relationships with culturally diverse clients.
• 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

Assessment: Intake Considerations for Grieving Clients

• Articulate how to plan and implement appropriate assessments, interventions, and strategies.
• Perform a clinical assessment to inform the clinician’s choice of best treatment interventions for the reduction of symptoms.
• Current conceptualization models
• Factors impacting the grief experience
• Assess for depression and suicide ideation
• Differentiate between depression, grief & PTSD
• Persistent Prolonged Grief Disorder
• Take home assessment tools

Grief Treatment: Interventions & Strategies to Improve Clinical Outcomes

• Analyze the efficacy of various treatment interventions for complicated grief to improve clinical outcomes.
• Utilize clinical strategies to assist grieving clients in the move from fight/flight or freeze to social engagement in sessions.
• Utilize the co-regulating pathways of the social engagement system in session as an approach to managing symptoms of complicated grief.
  • 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
  • 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
  • “Family coat of arms” activity 

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

• Scrutinize the ethical and legal issues in end-of-life decisions, such as suffering, dying and choice, and their clinical implications.
• Examine one’s own cognitive, affective, behavioral, and valuational reaction to death and dying and bereavement as it relates to professional practice with client’s experiencing grief and loss.
• 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

Target Audience

• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Counselors
• Addiction Counselors
• Case Manager
• Social Workers
• Pastoral Counselors
• Chaplains/Clergy
• Funeral Directors
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Mental Health Nurses
• Nursing Home Administrators
• Thanatologists
• Physicians
• Other Mental Health Professionals

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