Treating Traumatic Loss: A Clinician's Guide to Helping Clients Cope with a Sudden, Violent, or Difficult Death Using the GRIEF Approach

Summary

Although grief and feelings of loss after the death of a loved one are natural and universal experiences, sudden, violent, and traumatic loss puts survivors at increased risk for a range of mental health problems and greatly complicates the grieving process. The Grief Recovery with Individualized Evidence-Based Formulation (GRIEF) approach is designed specifically for treating individuals suffering from the grief that results from a traumatic death, and provides a transdiagnostic, modular, and comprehensive framework to target the common underlying symptoms of PTSD, depression, and prolonged grief disorder (PGD).

Treating Traumatic Loss starts with an introduction to traumatic loss and the GRIEF approach model, then guides you, step by step, through treatment planning—from conducting a thorough assessment of symptoms informed by a multicultural lens, to selecting modules for intervention. A chapter dedicated to each of eight modules provides recommendations on how to perform intervention techniques in your practice. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), experiential, and narrative practices and strategies from both the trauma and grief fields are synthesized into one module-based approach that addresses the unique needs of your clients—providing a powerful, flexible, and individualized way to improve treatment outcomes.