The Restorative Nature Of Ongoing Connections With The Deceased

The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections with the Deceased is a guide to stimulating thought and discussion about ongoing attachments between bereaved individuals and their deceased loved ones. Chapters promote broad, inclusive training and dialogue for working with clients who establish and/or maintain a restorative connection with their deceased loved one as well as those who find aspects of such connections to be psychologically or spiritually problematic or troublesome. Bereavement professionals will come away from this book with a better understanding and a deeper skillset for helping clients to develop continuing bonds.

Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased brings together cutting-edge empirical and theoretical contributions from scholars in fields including psychology, theology, ethics, neuroscience, medicine, and philosophy, to examine how and why humans engage in, or even seek spiritual experiences and connection with the immaterial world. In this richly interdisciplinary volume, Plante and Schwartz recognize human interaction with the divine and departed as a cross-cultural and historical universal that continues to concern diverse disciplines. Accounting for variances in belief and human perception and use, the book is divided into four major sections: personal experience; theological consideration; medical, technological, and scientific considerations; and psychological considerations with chapters addressing phenomena including prayer, reincarnation, sensed presence, and divine revelations. Featuring scholars specializing in theology, psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and ethics, this book provides a thoughtful, compelling, evidence-based, and contemporary approach to gain a grounded perspective on current understandings of human interaction with the divine, the sacred, and the deceased. Of interest to believers, questioners, and unbelievers alike, this volume will be key reading for researchers, scholars, and academics engaged in the fields of religion and psychology, social psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and health psychology. Readers with a broader interest in spiritualism, religious and non-religious movements will also find the text of interest.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of drug-related death bereavement to increase understanding and help direct scientific research, with contributions from across the globe. It is the first comprehensive, cross-cultural, multidisciplinary review of research on drug-related death (DRD)bereavement. Chapters cover the impact of DRD at individual, family, cultural, and societal levels, and topics include working with, and social support for, families following drug-related loss, understanding grief processes of individuals, drug policy, and the importance of cultural contexts. The book also elaborates on methodological issues when researching DRD. This handbook will increase understanding of DRD bereavement and contribute to support for DRD bereaved persons and those who care for them professionally and personally. It is essential reading for professionals and academics in the field as well as anyone affected by DRD.

A comprehensive and up-to-date handbook that surveys the field of grief therapy. With contributions from leading international scholars and practitioners, it covers: Foundational matters such as clinical presentations in bereavement, the conceptualization of grief therapy and its evidence base; distinctive approaches to grief therapy including existential therapy, art therapy, CBT and narrative, psychodynamic and meaning-based approaches; specific circumstances of death such as violent death and suicide, and particular populations such as bereaved parents and grieving children; professional issues such as training in grief therapy and therapist self-care. The handbook is designed with students and practitioners in mind, with vivid case studies that bring theory and practice to life, key-point summaries at the end of each chapter and recommendations for further reading on each topic.

Bereavement is often treated as a psychological condition of the individual with both healthy and pathological forms. However, this empirically-grounded study argues that this is not always the best or only way to help the bereaved. In a radical departure, it emphasises normality and social and cultural diversity in grieving. Exploring the significance of the dying person’s final moments for those who are left behind, this book sheds new light on the variety of ways in which bereaved people maintain their relationship with dead loved ones and how the dead retain a significant social presence in the lives of the living. It draws practical conclusions for professionals in relation to the complex and social nature of grief and the value placed on the right to grieve in one’s own way – supporting and encouraging the bereaved person to articulate their own experience and find their own methods of coping. Based on new empirical research, Bereavement Narratives is an innovative and invaluable read for all students and researchers of death, dying and bereavement.

First published in 1996. This new book gives voice to an emerging consensus among bereavement scholars that our understanding of the grief process needs to be expanded. The dominant 20th century model holds that the function of grief and mourning is to cut bonds with the deceased, thereby freeing the survivor to reinvest in new relationships in the present. Pathological grief has been defined in terms of holding on to the deceased. Close examination reveals that this model is based more on the cultural values of modernity than on any substantial data of what people actually do. Presenting data from several populations, 22 authors - among the most respected in their fields - demonstrate that the health resolution of grief enables one to maintain a continuing bond with the deceased. Despite cultural disapproval and lack of validation by professionals, survivors find places for the dead in their on-going lives and even in their communities. Such bonds are not denial: the deceased can provide resources for enriched functioning in the present. Chapters examine widows and widowers, bereaved children, parents and siblings, and a population previously excluded from bereavement research: adoptees and their birth parents. Bereavement in Japanese culture is also discussed, as are meanings and implications of this new model of grief. Opening new areas of research and scholarly dialogue, this work provides the basis for significant developments in clinical practice in the field.

Compassion-Based Approaches in Loss and Grief introduces clinicians to a wide array of strategies and frameworks for engaging clients throughout the loss experience, particularly when those experiences have a protracted course. In the book, clinicians and researchers from around the world and from a variety of fields explore ways to cultivate compassion and how to implement compassion-based clinical practices specifically designed to address loss, grief, and bereavement. Students, scholars, and mental health and healthcare professionals will come away from this important book with a deepened understanding of compassion-based approaches and strategies for enhancing distress tolerance, maintaining focus, and identifying the clinical interventions best suited to clients’ needs.

Attachment-Informed Grief Therapy bridges the fields of attachment studies, thanatology, and interpersonal neuroscience, uniting theory, research, and practice to enrich our understanding of how we can help the bereaved. The new edition includes updated research and discussion of emotion regulation, relational trauma, epistemic trust, and much more. In these pages, clinicians and students will gain a new understanding of the etiology of problematic grief and its treatment, and will become better equipped to formulate accurate and specific case conceptualization and treatment plans. The authors also illustrate the ways in which the therapeutic relationship is crucially important – though largely unrecognized – element in grief therapy and offer guidelines for an attachment-informed view of the therapeutic relationship that can serve as the foundation of all grief therapy. Written by two highly experienced grief counselors, this volume is filled with instructive case vignettes and useful techniques that offer a universal and practical frame of reference for understanding grief therapy for clinicians of every theoretical persuasion.