Most earlier books on bereavement have fallen into two categories: distillations of the clinical experience of individual therapists or collections of chapters reporting the results of empirical studies. Each category is valuable but has tended to serve a narrow group of readers - practitioners with particular theoretical orientations or researchers in quest of the latest findings. Coauthored by a leading research psychologist and an experienced therapist who specializes in bereavement education and intervention, this book is different.
The authors weave together the strands of theory, research and clinical wisdom into a readable narrative. While they discuss previous work, they also present data from one of the largest studies of bereaved people ever conducted, the Bereavement Coping Project. Unlike some studies, which focused on only one type of bereaved group (usually widows or widowers), the Bereavement Coping Project examined the experiences of several different groups during the first 18 months after the death. The groups included those who had lost a spouse, a parent, an adult sibling, or a child; and those who had lost their significant other to cancer or cardiovascular disease on one hand as opposed to the stigmatized disease of AIDS on the other. The book begins with a critical overview of theories of bereavement; succeeding chapters explore in depth the impact of specific types of loss, the impact of particular coping strategies on recovery; the impact of social support and religion, and the special cases of children and of people who seem to grow and change for the better after a loss. A final chapter considers implications for intervention with bereaved people.Each chapter is illustrated with real-life examples throughout and ends with a section called "Voices" in which bereaved people describe their various attempts to cope in their own words.
