Counselling for Death and Dying

Death and dying can be stressful for dying people, their loved ones and caregivers. Psychologists can help. They can assess mood, mental functioning, and pain; treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems; provide end-of-life counseling to the dying and their families; and advocate for good medical care. Psychotherapy with dying patients shares many features with all other psychotherapy. However, the unique status of the dying person presents special problems for the mental health professional. Clearly, everyone will die, and in this sense all therapy is done with patients of a limited life span. The labeling of a person as a "dying patient", identifies that person as belonging to a special category of humanity, and creates profound changes in the emotional, social, and spiritual climate of therapy. The dying person is one who is seen to be in a life-threatening condition with relatively little remaining time rind little or no hope of recovery. This unique existential position of the dying person necessitates some adaptations of the typical psychotherapeutic attitudes and strategies.

Placing a focus on the spiritual needs of death and dying, the theme of this book is that the focus of counselling with people who are dying should be on the psychospiritual aspects of death and dying. In this book, we'll cover the basics of grief counseling/grief therapy and provide suggestions, tips, techniques, and exercises you can implement as a person in grieving, part of the support system for a person who is grieving, or as a mental health professional. The growing concern for improved quality of care for the dying and the bereaved is reviewed. The growth of the hospice movement, home-care teams and self-help groups are referred to, together with the attempts that have been made to evaluate the effectiveness of bereavement counsel ling. In the light of current work and formal psychological studies, an outline of the grief process is given. The psychodynamic approaches are primarily concerned with the emotional conflicts and defense mechanisms of the individual. Special issues of conflict and defense arise in the dying person, and this approach addresses them in the hope of resolving the psychic crisis to the fullest extent possible. Dying is the ultimate crisis of ego development, and as such is associated with intense infra-psychic turmoil.