Online Grief Counselling Course

Help People to Deal with Grief

Dealing with grief can be a very challenging time for those experiencing it. Observing someone suffering from grief and being unable to help them can be equally distressing.  

Grief is a term used to describe all the thoughts, behaviour and feelings that occur after someone goes through a bereavement. A bereavement is any event that includes a loss. We may experience loss through the death of someone close to us, or a relationship breakdown, divorce, theft, a disability, illness, miscarriage and so on.

There is no “right” way to respond to a death, people will cope with a death in their own way. The way they respond will be affected by their relationship with the person who has died, their own upbringing, their previous reactions to losses, their other relationships, and so forth.

There are many different responses to grief, which are totally normal, and doctors, counsellors and psychiatrists may be reluctant to diagnose a person as mentally ill during a bereavement. They may provide support to help the person grieve.

A grief counsellor can help the mourning process by allowing a person to move through the stages of grief in a relationship that is supportive and confidential. The grief counsellor will try to help the person to accept their loss and talk about it. They will encourage them to identify and express their feelings of anger, guilt, sadness, helplessness and anxiety.

There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. Nature and Scope of Grief and Bereavement
   • Understanding loss
   • Society's views on loss
   • Coping with loss
   • Knowing what to expect
   • Mourning
   • Living with grief
   • Terminology
   • Types of grief
2. Stages of Grief
   • Common stages
   • Duration of grief
   • Denial
   • Anger
   • Bargaining
   • Depression
   • Acceptance
   • Tasks of mourning
   • Criticism
   • Mourning process in Judaism (case study)
   • Response to loss and grieving
   • Not coping
3. Grief and Children
   • Grief for children up to three years old
   • Greif for 3 to 6 year old
   • Grief for 7 - 8 year old
   • Greif for children 9 years and older
   • Preparing a child for death
   • Sudden death
   • After a death
   • Funerals
   • Typical child responses to grief
   • Case studies
   • Feelings about suicide
   • Supporting a grieving child
   • Help from family and friends
   • Guidelines for letting children know what is and is not acceptable
   • Children with serious problems with loss and grief
4. Grief and Adolescents
   • Grief as a unique adolescent experience
   • Adolescent responses: remoteness, anger, abuse, tears, egocentrism, sense of universality, etc
   • Helping the grieving adolescent
   • Difference between adolecent and adult grief experience
5. Adjustment to Bereavement
   • What is grief
   • Accept the loss
   • Feel the pain
   • Adjust, Adapt, etc
   • Grief counselling
   • Counsellors response and intervention
6. Abnormal Grief
   • Complicated grief reactions
   • Worden's categories of complicated grief reactions
   • Causes of abnormal grief
   • Post traumatic stress disorder
   • Symptoms and treatment of PTSD
   • Loss of children in pregnancy: ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage
   • Supporting people with complicated grief
   • Managing grief after a disaster
   • The course of bereavement
   • Complications of bereavement
   • Traumatic grief
   • Risk factors for complications of bereavement
   • Treating bereaved individuals
   • Role of the professional in early stages of disaster bereavement
7. Preparing for Grief and Bereavement
   • Socio cultural influences on the grief process
   • Grief and terminal illness
   • Preparing for an approaching death
   • Practical preparations
   • Emotional responses of the dying
   • Responses of family and friends
8. Future Outlook and Long-Term Grief
   • Psychological aspects of long term grief
   • Cronic illness and grief case study
   • Disabled child case study
   • Strategies for handling long term grief: guided mourning, support groups, medication, etc

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

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