When Grief Goes Viral and Therapy Goes Virtual: Responding to Loss Online During a Crisis

With the global pandemic of COVID-19 sweeping the planet 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 program discusses the unique challenges of providing telehealth intervention with clients bereaved during a crisis of this scope, irrespective of the cause of death, highlighting empirical risk factors for prolonged and complicated grief reactions. Participants will be acquainted with a carefully validated assessment tool for the tsunami of unfinished business in bereavement that the pandemic will leave in its wake and will be introduced to evidence informed interventions for dealing with these disturbances constructively.

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, 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. 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 and made a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Website: www.portlandinstitute.org