Bereavement & Grief

Catalog description

This course will allow students to explore issues of grief and loss and implications for social work practice. Students will become familiar with the bio, psycho, social, cultural and spiritual contexts of grief, loss and bereavement. In addition to gaining knowledge students will also learn intervention skills and techniques in working with clients across the lifespan. Bereavement, including complicated grief, traumatic loss and generation mourning will be addressed. Students will also gain skills in addressing normative loss including divorce, economic hardship, illness, foster placement to name a few. Gender, racial, ethnic and religious influences that affect grief and loss will be explored, as well as culturally-sensitive practice interventions. A number of theoretical perspectives will be reviewed as frameworks for understanding varying reactions to death and loss and for treating the bereaved. Students will also be asked to consider their own experiences, views, anxieties with loss and death, and how these may affect their work with clients.