Abstract
Among the inevitable traumatic hazards that people encounter is death of a loved one. A notable reaction to such loss is grief. Individuals in grief could develop a crisis and suddenly start to function with diminished capacity. While some individuals navigate their grieving phase with minimal damage and return to functionality, others lack the requisite resources to manage the phase, leading them to crisis. This latter group needs counsellors to assist them navigate the phase and return to pre-crisis functionality. This chapter provides two-way effective grief and trauma counselling therapies. To social supports, it provides empathic listening, tolerating awkward responses from the bereaved, and observing a task that needs to be done and do it vicariously, etc. To the bereaved, it offers cognitive restructuring, self-monitoring of thoughts and recording, increasing help-seeking behaviours, Premack principle, time out, self-compassion, bibliotherapy, and reinforcement, among other therapies, to manage grief and trauma during bereavement.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Follow-Up: This occurs when the rehabilitative counsellor continues to reach out to a rehabilitated bereaved person to help them maintain their recovery, and assist them manage relapse.
Sympathisers: These are people who pay occasional visits to the bereaved person mainly to commiserate with them rather than offer recovery assistance.
Intervention: This is the entire rehabilitative counsellor’s professional strategies to assuage the grieving condition of the bereaved.
Social Supports: These are people such as family members, friends, classmates, workmates, religious faithful, and neighbours who work with rehabilitative counsellor to enhance recovery of the bereaved person.
Rehabilitative Counsellor: This is the professional counsellor who is proficient in application of therapies in assisting bereaved person recover from bereavement and return to pre-bereavement productivity.
Youruba: These are the ethnic group of people who occupy the six Southwestern states of Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo in Nigeria; their main language is Yoruba.
Reinforcer: This involves presentable gifts or verbal praises offered bereaved person by rehabilitative counsellor to acknowledge improvements in the recovery process of the bereaved person.
Grief: The situation of high degree of sadness that a bereaved person experiences after the death of their beloved one; it is synonymous with bereavement.
Emotional Hazards: These are unpleasant occurrences brought by nature or human actions whose negative effects lead to disturbed state for the recipient.
Crisis: This is a higher degree of disturbance that someone who has encountered a traumatic occurrence falls into, where professional help is required to assist the person recover.