When Grief Goes Viral: An Update on Assessment and Intervention in the COVID Crisis

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 carefully validated screening tools for both coronavirus anxiety as the contagion spreads and the pandemic grief it will leave in its wake and suggests evidence informed interventions for dealing 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 assumptive world 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 both personal and practical means of enhancing our professional presence to patients in the current climate, and highlight some of the themes and strategies for meaning-oriented grief counseling.

• Describe two validated brief screening tools for assessing coronavirus anxiety and dysfunctional grief following COVID bereavement.
• Discriminate between therapeutic presence and therapeutic absence in working.
• Summarize seven practical tips for enhancing presence in a videoconference context of service delivery.
• List four evidence-informed risk factors for complicated or prolonged grief exacerbated by the COVID crisis.
• Identify six therapeutic procedures for addressing Coronavirus anxiety and unfinished business in bereavement.

Robert Neimeyer, PhD