Advanced Topics in Interpersonal Practice

This course addresses the theoretical framework and clinical interventions for complicated grief and mourning from culturally diverse and lifespan perspectives. It seeks to provide information about the normal course of grief and the events and circumstances that create complicated grief reactions that interfere with integration of loss and adaptation after mourning. This interpersonal practice minicourse can augment the HBSE 617 course or can be taken independently. Attention is focused on life span development and the meaning of complicated grief and mourning at different ages. Various types of complicated grief are discussed from individual, family, and socio/cultural perspectives. The importance of distinguishing normal grieving from depression, complicated grief and post-traumatic stress will be addressed. Clinical interventions for depression, normal grief, complicated grieving will be addressed. The course will emphasize coping and resiliency in individual, family, and community responses and the diversity of human response and will focus on the significance of using social groups in acknowledging grief and addressing mourning. The formation and practice of rituals, and diversity in religious and spiritual experience as a component of grieving will be discussed. This minicourse does not overlap with minicourse ‘Trauma and its Treatment’, but can be seen as the complementary minicourse in the clinical work of addressing loss and trauma.