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.
Length: 90 Minutes
