by Vicki Phipps

Created on: September 19, 2008

To help us understand why bereavement counseling benefits those who are grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. wrote the book On Death and Dying. She explains the need for bereavement counseling comes from the fact that today, more people live to old age. Because the medical world keeps us living longer than people did in the past, we've just begun to understand the facts of the grieving process. Today, grief counseling is not just for those left behind, but it also benefits those who are dying. More often than not, today we begin to grieve the loss of life before death arrives.

BENEFITS OF BEREAVEMENT COUNSELING:

1. Bereavement counseling bridges the gap between the stages of grief to a peaceful acceptance.

Both those who are dying and those who are left behind go through the grieving process when faced with death. Bereavement counselors are educated and trained to provide the most beneficial ways to help us get through the stages of grief so that we can find peace of mind. The stages include, denial, anger, depression and bargaining with God and life to find hope. The counselor can help the family absorb the reality within each stage in a comforting way.

They can keep us from getting stuck within the anger stage and help us see how our childhood insecurities might be holding us back from finding peace with the death or the dying process.

2. The bereavement counselor can be the go between with the family and the medical team.

When someone we love is dying from a terminal illness, the grieving process creates some communication issues that are difficult to overcome unless there's someone who can relate and relay the facts at the most appropriate time for each member of the family and the one who is dying, which benefits all involved. Because the grieving process is generally the same process for all, but processed in different ways, the counselor can be the best source of information at the best time for each individual grief.

3. The bereavement counselor can assist the family in dealing with issues that arise in spite of the need to grieve.

Within the stages of denial, anger and depression, it's difficult to deal with the fact that life goes on, no matter what. The counselor can assist with this by providing family and friends with a list of tasks to accomplish. He or she can help us decide who will pay the bills, care for the children, clean and cook or who will make the funeral arrangements. The couselor can be the object third party who is able to do what those

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