Grief counseling

This article discusses the " commissioned " grief counseling, which is performed at the request and under the responsibility of an organization or a service. The ordinary humanity with which colleagues, friends, neighbors, a grieving people turn and meet him in everyday life, is not referred to in this context as grief counseling.

Bereavement support in a social context

The (person responsible ) grief counseling can be understood as an attempt to meet the human need for mourning and their company, which was becoming increasingly marginalized in modernity by the taboo areas of life death, illness, death and the ensuing " mourning abstinence ". Thus, the modern hospice movement emerged, inter alia, as a response to death and grief apparently no longer took place in hospitals and homes for the elderly in a deemed appropriate framework. This displacement is of representatives of the hospice movement often the modern competitive society and its ideal of " functionality " of the people charged, are often inoperative -making stigma within which illness and death and the associated feelings. Only with the advent of the hospice movement and the social theming of AIDS since the beginning of the 80s the accompaniment relatives and friends of the dying has made it into public awareness via its death out again.

Mourning and grief counseling

Since Freud's classic monograph on " Mourning and Melancholia " from the year 1917, the basic assumption is shared by psychological science and practice that mourners must be faced to process their loss with their feelings. Avoid this confrontation, they run the risk of mismatch, which may result in the unprocessed grief neuroses and depression. The mourners must therefore afford " grief work ". In grief work is the process of emotional and cognitive engagement with the reality of loss: The widowed repeatedly deal with events before and during the death and with their memories of the deceased. The function of the grieving process should be to define the emotional ties to the deceased and re- integrated as a component which is, however, passed into his life. The term or concept of " grief work " is not scientifically studied. Although theorists have developed in recent times, a more differentiated picture of the cognitive processes of grief processing, most treatment programs even today the grieving process a central role to play and see pathological grief as a result of inadequate completed " work of mourning ".

Revealing one's own feelings about the loss to friends, family, fellow or professional helpers is not a necessary prerequisite for the work of mourning, as you with his feelings can deal alone. However, a close relationship between the two processes: Some people succeed in dealing with their grief just about the conversation. By talking with others, clarifies for them the situation and they process their grief. It is a function of grief counseling and grief therapy to face confrontation with the loss, as well as to accompany the mourners in their grief work empathically. This is not about to free them from the grief, but to help them to accept the experienced loss and grief associated as a part of their lives and to integrate in order to emerge after the completed grieving process and life-affirming to live forward. Losses can only be accepted if they have been abgetrauert.

One of the most comprehensive studies on this subject is the Tübingen Longitudinal Study of widowhood. In this study, a group of widowed men and women over a period of two years was repeatedly questioned about their loss and comparing their condition with comparable by age, gender, number of children and socio-economic status of married couples. As a result of this study can be summarized that grief counseling or grief therapy helps only those who mourn, who are themselves unable to cope with their grief, because they lack an interlocutor. It follows from the limitation of aid to the people who benefit from this help the most for the practice of grief counseling.

Children grief counseling

In the children's grief counseling children and parents are accompanied in their grieving process. In children grief groups is mediated to children about conversations and creative activity that their grief is not a disease but a natural reaction to the loss of a loved one. They are encouraged to express their feelings and learn to accept them. A special role in the grieving process with children play symbols and symbolic language. By the Federation Funeral own standards for training in children's grief counseling are developed currently.

Quality requirements in grief counseling

The bereavement support has gone in recent years significantly in width: So this is now offered by various institutions and individuals, but also involved in other concepts such as funeral, family education, psychological counseling and therapy. Because of this change is discussed in recent years increasingly on quality standards and quality assurance within the bereavement support.

Development of generally accepted standards in grief counseling

2007 common technical standards for qualifications in bereavement care were formulated by the then federal working group grief counseling. These standards are increasingly adopted by people and institutions that also offer advanced training in grief counseling, but not members of the BAT.