When Grief Goes Viral: Healing Grief in the Time of COVID

Presenter: Robert Neimeyer

Length: 90 Minutes

Price: $15

In this Webinar: 

With the global pandemic of COVID-19 has come the loss of a world of once familiar routines, relationships and resources that previously conferred on our lives a sense of security and meaning. This workshop introduces easy-to-use measures of both coronavirus anxiety as the contagion spreads and the pandemic grief it will leave in its wake, which can serve as both self-assessments for the lay public and as carefully validated screening tools for professionals to identify client needs. Guided by the application of these and other measures with thousands of Americans struggling with the multiple losses of the pandemic, we will suggest both self-care strategies for the public and evidence informed interventions to help clinicians deal with these disturbances constructively. Because of the pervasiveness of changes engendered by the Coronavirus and policies required to mitigate contagion, ambiguous losses and challenges to our most basic beliefs and expectations about life compound grief associated with bereavement and call for greater recognition and support by mental health professionals.

These same policies and procedures to mitigate contagion also challenge the provision of health and mental health services as assessment and intervention commonly take place in virtual rather than face-to-face encounters. We will therefore discuss practical means of enhancing the quality of telehealth support and therapy in the current climate and highlight some of the themes and strategies for meaning-oriented grief counseling.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe two validated brief screening tools for assessing coronavirus anxiety and dysfunctional grief following COVID bereavement.
2. Summarize seven practical tips for enhancing presence in a videoconference context of service delivery.
3. List four evidence-informed risk factors for complicated or prolonged grief exacerbated by the COVID crisis.
4. Identify six therapeutic procedures for addressing Coronavirus anxiety and unfinished business in bereavement.

Continuing Education Information

Optional CEs (1.5) may be purchased through R. Cassidy Seminars. A link to purchase CE Credits will be included in the email containing all your webinar resources. More Info Here

About the Presenter

Robert Neimeyer Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, maintains an active consulting and coaching practice, and also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, a “university without walls” for international online training in grief therapy.  Neimeyer has published 30 books, including Routledge’s series on Techniques of Grief Therapy, and serves as Editor of Death Studies. The author of over 500 articles and chapters and a popular workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process.  In recognition of his contributions, he has been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning.