Functions of Grief Counseling

And these are just the stories about the violence brought about by guns. There is also the psychic violence that comes to people when a plane crashes, or a school bus overturns or the earth opens up along its ancient fault lines and maims and mangles and kills.

So much grief, by the hand of nature or our fellow humans.

And just as commonplace as are the stories and images of terrible things befalling communities is the tag line that we have become accustomed to hearing: ôCounselors will be on hand to help the students/parents/survivors deal with their grief.ö

But what good does grief counseling do in the aftermath of tragedies felt by entire communities? This paper looks at the issue of grief counseling, examining whether it provides lasting benefits or is simply a fad that like primal scream therapy appeals to a passing and overly simplistic model of human behavior and human emotional needs at those times when people are most bereft.

Grief counselors provide a number of important benefits for people in communities struck by terrible events, including providing a chan

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realities of life that people in other cultures are more familiar with: Most Americans, for example, do not have the experience of having a close relative die at home and so they do not expect the intensity of grief nor do they have a good understanding of the fact that its intensity will not endure as long as it seems that it will. The presence of grief counselors helps guide people into a sense of the legitimacy of their grief while also reassuring them that even the most terrible sorrows lessen in time (Harvey, 1998, p. E4). One of the reasons that grief can be so overwhelming is that in addition to the specific loss suffered by a person during a given tragedy, there is also quite often the sudden awareness for a person of his or her own mortality, so in some ways what people are having to cope with is not only the loss of neighbors, friends, family members or home but the loss of the sense of our own security. Although we all know that someday we will die, we tend to go about our daily lives ignoring this fact, until an earthquake or a tornado or a terrorist reminds us that life can end at any moment. This is true at any time of grief, but it seems to be exaggerated in examples of community-wide grief (McLeod, 1999, p. P7). T
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Approximate Word count = 2344
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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