Understanding Loss and Grief Diploma Course

Unit 1: What is loss?

• Loss as a continuous life process
• Some models of loss
• Death as a taboo - an historical perspective
• Taking responsibility for support

Unit 2: 'Dying is an art'

• Where people die
• A good death?
• Euthanasia or assisted suicide
• Losses for the dying; losses for the carer
• Meeting the needs of the dying and their carers
• Awareness of dying
• Two models of dying
• The dying person's Bill of Rights
• Declaration of Rights of people with cancer
  Case studies

Unit 3: Grief work

• "Grief work” the thinking of Sigmund Freud
• Melanie Klein and internalisation
• Bowlby's attachment theory
• Anticipatory grief
• Cultural patterns in grief

Unit 4: Models of grief (1)

• Theories and models of grief
• Worden's four tasks of mourning
• Murray-Parkes' concept of psycho-social transition in loss
• Murray-Parkes' four stages of grieving ”a sequential model"
• Benefits and drawbacks of linear models of grief

Unit 5: Models of grief (2)

• The validity of linear models of grief and further thoughts
• Determinants of grief
• Stroebe's 'dual process' model of grief
• Marris's sociological perspective on grief

Unit 6: How do we grieve?

• Manifestations of grief
• Expression of grief
• Implications for support / four types of support

Unit 7: The grief of parents and children

• The nature of childhood grief
• The child's concept of death
• Adult attitudes to children's grief
• The child's expression of grief
• Loss and change for the bereaved child
• Adolescent grief
• Parental grief

Unit 8: Complex and complicated grief

• Complex and complicated grief
• Indicators of abnormal grief
• Absence of grief
• Chronic grief
• Complicated or complex grief
• The role of medication in grief
• Factors complicating grief

Unit 9: Special considerations

• Special considerations
• Suicide
• Sexuality and bereavement
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Grief after voluntary euthanasia (assisted suicide)

Unit 10: In memoriam

• Immortality & some interpretations
• The funeral
• Children and funerals
• The epitaph
• Humour and death

Unit 11: New thinking on Loss and Grief

• Revisiting ideas
• Looking at more recent thinking
• Getting over it
• The growing around grief model
• Bereavement and Biography
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Object Relations Theory