Thanatechnology : Any kind of technology that can be used to deal with death, dying, grief, loss and illness. Kelly (an alias), an eighth-grader, sits with her friends in the school auditorium as her principal calls out the names of each of her classmates who were killed in the
Tag: Grief and Loss
Catherine Beckett, an American Counseling Association member with a private practice in Portland, Oregon, has made it a habit to avoid using “must” phrases with clients. “It sends a message to the client about what they’ve experienced,” says Beckett, who specializes in grief counseling. “I don’t ever want to say,
Burying a child is not something that most people think about — until they must do it. I’ve done it twice, and I must say, I really do not know how I survived it. It has been more than 10 years, and I still do not truly comprehend the impact
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” — Anatole France ***** On Jan. 22, following a three-week whirlwind diagnosis and decline, my husband and I said goodbye to our 6.5-year-old goldendoodle, Lily. Her disease had rendered this Frisbee-catching superstar unable to
During the time that Kerin Groves spent by her dying client’s hospital bed, she could tell that he felt conflicted. “I sensed he kept hanging on because his adult children were unable to cope with him dying,” she recalls. “The son kept urging him to fight and get better, even
For many years, mental health practitioners labored under the assumption that grief was a relatively short-lived process that people navigated in an orderly and predictable fashion until they reached “closure” — the point at which the bereaved would move on and put the person they had been grieving in the
This past summer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, announced that they are expecting a baby. This celebrity baby news grabbed headlines for a different reason than most, however. The couple’s announcement included a candid acknowledgment that they had been trying to have a baby for
The first time I met Cynthia (not her real name) was in my office. She was in her late 20s and came to me because of a fear of driving. Initially, I believed her case would require cognitive behavioral work, and having received advanced training in rational emotive behavior therapy,
Experiencing loss is an inevitable part of life, and counselors are trained to help others overcome these emotionally difficult events. But what do counselors do to process their own personal grief — and how can they ensure that their grieving does not impede on the therapeutic process of clients? Eric
Tony Colombrito has been a trained American Red Cross disaster mental health volunteer for the past two years, but it wasn’t until the Dec. 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that he finally deployed. He spent nearly a week with residents of the town and