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Grief may be a primary presenting concern of clients or may form a background to another presenting concern. In either case, use of best practices in assessing and treating grief is essential. In this article I review what best practices are in general and in assessment and treatment. I also evaluate ways to measure grief and describe domains of the grief experience. The article also discusses controversies within the literature on grief counseling, including the potential for deterioration after treatment. It concludes with a view of counseling grief that promotes finding benefit from trauma.
This special section describes the devastating impact of loss on the life of a person. However common it may be, loss causes significant individual grieving, which in turn can impair emotional, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. Throughout this special section we have emphasized the difficulties caused by the crisis of loss and the experience of bereavement, such as the potential of complicated grief and the special case of parentally bereaved children. We have also noted the importance of culture-based counseling issues related to grief.
More important, however, is a larger perspective introduced by Harvey, who defined loss as a "fundamental human experience" (Harvey, 2002, p. 2) from which we can grow and learn to understand others, help others, and develop our own courage to live with pain. It is critical to keep this positive view of grief in mind when considering best practices in counseling those who are grieving because it treats counseling as facilitating growth rather than simply mending loss.
In this article I focus on the evidence that underlies assessment and treatment, and on practices that should be considered in counseling the grieving client. Thinking of grieving within the context of posttraumatic growth will define alternative counseling approaches.
IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICES: FROM RESEARCH EVIDENCE TO COUNSELING EACH CLIENT
What are best practices! Though the term has been adopted widely, its usage is not agreed upon - much like terminology related to grief. Concisely, best practices, a term borrowed from the business world, suggests that there is a particular technique, approach, or method that when used with a particular target is more effective (reaches its goals) and efficient (uses fewer resources) than other techniques, approaches, or methods. It also suggests...