Grief counselling and therapy
The case for humility
Keywords:
Grief counselling, bereavement support, outcomes, effectiveness, meta-analysisAbstract
AbstractIn response to the article by Larson and Hoyt in the previous issue of Bereavement Care in which they challenge his ‘pessimism’ about the efficacy of grief counselling, Robert Neimeyer here reviews what is currently known about the empirical status of bereavement interventions, drawing in particular on a recent comprehensive meta-analysis of over 60 controlled studies. He concludes from this evidence that grief counsellors indeed have much to offer bereaved people who have the greatest support needs following a death, but that they also need to acknowledge the limits to their knowledge of what works, with which clients, when, and why.
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