Helping Grieving People - When Tears Are Not Enough

Helping Grieving People -- When Tears Are Not Enough is a handbook for care providers who offer service, support, and counselling to those grieving death, illness, and other losses. This book also serves as an excellent text for academic courses and staff development training.

The author discusses grief as it affects various relationships and explores different intervention and support strategies, always being mindful of individual and cultural differences in the expression and treatment of grief. Jeffreys has developed a practical approach to preparing grief care providers through three basic tracks:

Heart – This track calls for self-discovery, encouraging individuals to free themselves from accumulated loss in order to focus all attention on the griever.

Head – This track emphasises understanding the complex and dynamic phenomena of human grief.

Hands – This track stresses the caregiver's actual intervention, addressing both lay and professional levels of skill, and outlining the various approaches for healing available.

Accompanying these motifs, the handbook discusses the social and cultural contexts of grief as applied to various populations of grievers, as well as the underlying psychological basis of human grief. Throughout the book, Jeffreys presents the role of the caregiver as an Exquisite Witness to the journey of grief and pain experienced by bereaved families and friends, as well as the path taken by dying persons and their families.

The second edition of Helping Grieving People remains faithful to the approach well received in the original volume. It includes updated research findings and addresses new information and developments in the field of loss, grief, and bereavement.