Content area
Full Text
J Rat-Emo Cognitive-Behav Ther (2017) 35:625
DOI 10.1007/s10942-016-0242-2
M. Katherine Shear1,2 Colleen Gribbin Bloom1
Published online: 24 May 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Complicated grief is a condition that occurs when something impedes the process of adapting to a loss. The core symptoms include intense and prolonged yearning, longing and sorrow, frequent insistent thoughts of the deceased and difculty accepting the painful reality of the death or imagining a future with purpose and meaning. Complicated grief can cause substantial distress and impairment and it is important that clinicians learn to recognize and treat this condition. Complicated grief treatment is a 16-session evidence-based psychotherapy developed to release and facilitate a bereaved persons natural adaptive response. The current paper claries the conceptual underpinnings of this approach, provides a description of the major treatment components, structure of each session, and suggestions for how clinicians can use the treatment to help clients suffering from complicated grief. A case example is also included to illustrate this discussion.
Keywords Bereavement Loss Complicated grief Psychotherapy Treatment
Introduction
Bereavement is one of lifes most difcult experiences yet most people nd ways to adapt to even the most painful loss. Research over the past few decades indicates that the adaptation process can sometimes go awry. However because grief-related distress and impairment in functioning can continue over a prolonged period there is continuing debate about when and how to identify maladaptive grief reactions.
& M. Katherine Shear ks2394@columbia.edu
1 Columbia University School of Social Work, New York, NY 10027, USA
2 Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10942-016-0242-2&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10942-016-0242-2&domain=pdf
Web End = Complicated Grief Treatment: An Evidence-Based Approach to Grief Therapy
123
Complicated Grief Treatment: An Evidence-Based Approach to 7
Holly Prigerson has led an effort to dene a syndrome characterized by grief that is inordinately prolonged and intense (Prigerson et al. 1995). Based on her valid reliable method for identifying this syndrome, our group developed and tested a treatment that we named complicated grief treatment (CGT). This paper describes CGT and suggests a clinical approach to recognizing people who might benet from this approach. A case example is included to illustrate this discussion.
Complicated grief treatment (CGT) has now been...