Multidimensional Grief Therapy
A Flexible Approach to Assessing and Supporting Bereaved Youth

Provides state-of-the-art guidance for working with young people contending with grief and bereavement, including traumatic deaths.

Julie B. Kaplow (Author), Christopher M. Layne (Author), Robert S. Pynoos (Author), William Saltzman (Author)

9781107566507, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 September 2023

172 pages
27.9 x 21.6 x 1 cm, 0.5 kg

'Multidimensional Grief Therapy provides a remarkable integration of a theoretical model of grief with measures and intervention strategies that are tailored to identify and treat the unique needs of different bereaved children. The book provides an impressive review of the scientific foundations of their approach. The approach provides guidance for clinicians to support adaptive grieving processes and to identify and treat maladaptive processes. The manual in the book provides step by step exercises clinicians can use to guide their practice, with each exercise nicely tied to the underlying theory of distinct dimensions of children's grief. The authors are distinguished scholars who have made significant contributions to our scientific understanding of children's grief. In this book they have brought all of their scientific research together to provide clinicians with a uniquely comprehensive model they can use to support bereaved youth.' Irwin Sandler, Research Professor (FSC), ASU Psychology REACH, Emeritus Professor, Emeritus College, Arizona State University

Multidimensional Grief Therapy (MGT) provides counselors, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists (as well as students in these fields) with a flexible program for assessing and supporting children and adolescents who have experienced bereavement. MGT is a strength-based intervention, designed to reduce unhelpful grief reactions that prevent adjustment, and promote adaptive grief reactions that enable children to cope better after a death. It also reduces associated symptoms of psychological distress and helps bereaved children and adolescents lead healthy, happy, productive lives. As young people grieve in different ways and “one-size-fits-all” treatments often lack effectiveness, MGT uses an assessment-driven, two-phased approach to effectively address the unique mental health needs of diverse youth. This manual provides a wealth of activities and handouts designed specifically to engage and empower youth after experiencing a death, including under traumatic circumstances.

1. Overview of multidimensional grief therapy
2. Multidimensional grief theory: the foundation of multidimensional grief therapy
3. MGT pretreatment assessment interview: using evidence-based assessment and goal setting to guide individual treatment using MGT
4. Caregivers as 'Co-facilitators' of children's grief
Session 1: Grief psychoeducation: what is grief?
Session 2: Emotion psychoeducation and identification: what am I feeling and why?
Session 3: Grief psychoeducation continued: how has my grief changed over time?
Session 4: Understanding caregivers as key grief facilitators: what can my caregiver do to support me?
Session 5: Understanding loss reminders and trauma reminders: what reminds me that they're no longer here? What reminds me of the way they died?
Session 6: Sizing up a situation: how can our thoughts change the way we feel or act?
Sessions 7-9: Loss narrative: telling the story of my person
Session 10: Graduation and launching into the future: what does it mean to have a 'good goodbye'?
Index.

Subject Areas: Clinical psychology [MMJ]