Routledge Coping with the Death of a Child: An Integrated Clinical Approach to Working with Bereaved Families

Coping with the Death of a Child shows clinicians how to integrate various therapeutic modalities and clinical approaches to grief therapy into one comprehensive model linked to positive change. This integrated model shows mental health professionals how to offer practical and emotional support to the bereaved using descriptions of treatments, care protocols, and guidelines. Through this approach, practitioners can foster interpersonal support and growth among families, even when grieving styles and timing differ between individuals. Clinicians and the families they treat will come away from the book with tools for recognizing distorted and pathogenic exchanges between family members, for valuing the emotional elements of their individual experiences, and for shifting toward solution-focused activities. Review "Many otherwise skilled psychotherapists would find the treatment of families who have lost a child a daunting prospect. Dr. Schiffman has provided an excellent, thorough road map founded on evidence-based principles and strategies. This book will become a highly valued resource among mental health providers from all disciplines who plan to treat families bereft of a child."―Gerald P. Koocher, PhD, ABPP, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Quincy College "First, I read Coping with the Death of a Child with my mind and my brain, and I was impressed by the depth and breadth of the work contained therein. Then I reread it with my heart and was moved by Dr. Schiffman’s combination of excellent research with compassion. This compassion is, of course, for those directly touched by death, and also for those practitioners who walk with them and find just the right timing and just the right note by which to help. There is a graciousness to this book that I have never found in another of this topic. This book is, indeed, a significant contribution to the thanatological literature, to clinicians, and to those families bereaved of such losses."―Fran Joslyn, PhD, RN, clinician in private practice "Darin Schiffman's Coping with the Death of a Child offers a comprehensive discussion of major models for working with the families facing the death of a child. Clinicians will find this an extremely useful tool that offers what it claims: a family-centered approach to grieving families."―Kenneth J Doka, PhD, professor of gerontology at the graduate school of the College of New Rochelle and senior consultant at the Hospice Foundation of America About the Author Darin D. Schiffman, PsyD, is a forensic psychologist at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey and a licensed psychologist in private practice. He has more than 20 years of experience working with bereaved families.