Helping Grieving People: When Tears Are Not Enough: A Handbook for Care Providers

by J. Shep Jeffreys

Helping Grieving People is a training manual for care providers who will provide support and counseling to those grieving death, illness, and other losses. The author addresses grief as it affects a variety of relationships and discusses different intervention and support strategies, always cognizant of individual and cultural differences in the expression and treatment of grief.

Jeffreys has established a practical approach to preparing trainee caregivers through three basic tracks: Heart, Head and Hand. The first step, Heart, calls for self discovery, freeing oneself of accumulated loss in order to focus all attention on the griever. Head emphasizes understanding the complex and dynamic phenomena of human grief. Hand stresses the caregiver's actual intervention, and speaks to the appropriate level of skill as well as the various methods of healing available. Following these three motifs, the Handbook discusses the social and cultural contexts of grief as well as its psychological constructs.

376 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2004

Reviews

[Bill Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr Jeffreys is the "special ops" guy in the Mid Atlantic area for those who lost children. He helped my wife and I breathe again after the tragic loss of our son. He is now my professor.

He is not only academic in his work, he has rich experience and has an empathetic heart.