Despite the significant impacts of bereavement, individuals with higher bereavement-related distress underutilise grief counselling and grief therapy.
A 2019 study investigated community attitudes toward grief counselling to understand why bereaved people who are highly distressed significantly underused grief counselling and therapy. The study participants were 156 adults (81 men, 75 women) ranging in age from 19 to 79 years.
After controlling for gender, it found that a participant’s beliefs about what grief counselling is, explained their attitudes towards it. These primarily centred on the beliefs that grief counselling is:
- Helpful;
- Non-judgmental;
- Supportive;
- Should be tailored to the needs of individuals and to the type of death, relationships, and culture.
There was also the belief that more awareness of grief counselling would be a positive move forward. The responses from the participants also suggested that grief counselling gave rise to positive emotions of:
- Affirmation;
- Comfort;
- Connectedness;
- Relief;
- Hope;
- Empowerment;
- Compassion;
and to negative feelings of:
- Sadness;
- Vulnerability,
- Embarrassment;
- Stigma;
- Emptiness;
- Hurt;
- Fear;
- Selfishness.
Those who had experience of grief counselling had mixed experiences of finding it helpful and not helpful, experienced stigma from others for seeking counselling, and thought that some who had provided grief counselling were underprepared for doing so as they perceived the quality of counselling to rely on the attributes and training of the counsellor.
Summary
The study findings suggested that targeting beliefs about grief counselling, including stigma, would be useful in modifying overall attitudes to grief counselling. It states that this recommendation is in line with other studies that show accurate knowledge and beliefs about psychological disorders and psychological treatment is associated with more positive attitudes toward psychological treatment.
Therefore, actively promoting accurate beliefs and targeting false beliefs about grief counselling will likely mean that bereaved individuals most in need of specialist grief counselling and therapy will be more likely to seek it.
Reference:
A full list of references is available in the Reference Material section.
- Breen, L., Croucamp, D. and Rees, C. (2019). What do people really think about grief counselling? Examining community attitudes. Death Studies, 43 (10).
