Facing grief

Murdoch doctoral psychology student Patricia Tan is developing a new technique to help people deal with grief.

Her thesis involves individual grief therapy sessions with 14 people who have lost someone close to them more than 14 months ago and are avoiding grieving.

Since March she has been conducting six weekly therapy sessions of an hour and a half with each participant at Murdoch University's Applied Psychology Clinic.

"I am interested in the concerns of people who are staying away from their grief," Ms Tan said.

"I am trying to provide a supportive and structured environment to enable these people to approach their grief and work through the issues that they have with their grief."

The participants' ages range from the mid-20s up to the 70s and they have varied backgrounds.

Ms Tan is conducting follow-ups by phone four weeks and eight weeks after therapy and participants fill out questionnaires to measure their progress.

She said people avoid grief by staying away from reminders of loved ones, such as physical objects, emotions or memories.

One of the techniques used in working with grief is called "exposure". People are exposed to what they have avoided until they get used to it and are desensitised. For example, a person may look at a photo of a loved one if they have been avoiding doing so.

"I get them to do things they avoided doing, feel things they avoided feeling."

However, Ms Tan said exposure has not been totally effective.

"Other aspects of grief, such as anxiety and depression, are not affected by exposure," she said.

"I am improving on this technique by using cognitive behavioural treatment," she said.

"As people are exposed I get them to identify their thoughts and the feelings that go with these thoughts."

Ms Tan gets participants to analyse their thoughts by asking them how accurate and useful their thoughts are.

"If their thoughts are not accurate or are accurate but not useful, I get them to think in a more functional, or healing, way," she said. "I try to get them to replace non-functional thoughts with more functional thoughts."

Ms Tan said she hoped the therapy would help the participants and that her research would help others if her technique was adopted by practitioners.

When she contacted participants in follow-ups they reported that they found the therapy helpful.

Ms Tan is also using questionnaires to find out ways that people cope with grief and how their strategies related to their physical and mental health.