HS 129 Grief, Loss, and Transition

Lecture Hours: 3
Credits: 3

Explores individual attitudes, beliefs, misconceptions, and responses toward death, dying, trauma, and out-of-sequences losses. Includes therapeutic tools used by professionals in assessing and addressing grief and mourning. Offers information on professionalism boundaries, compassion fatigue, and the importance of dealing with personal unresolved issues. Class is highly interactive.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Express feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and misconceptions about loss, grief, and death.
Identify strategies for working with the dying and their loved ones.
Identify intervention strategies for working with individual grief issues.
Apply grief and loss strategies to common grief scenarios, knowledge about grief, and loss in the human services field.
Describe end-of-life planning and services provided by funeral/mortuary experience and hospice
Discuss the implications of near-death experiences.
Describe religious and other cultural customs and rituals surrounding grief, death, and dying.
Describe the differences in how men, women, and children respond to loss.
Describe responses to trauma and traumatic events versus anticipated loss.

Content Outline

Personal Feelings, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values Related to Death, Dying, and Grief
Loss in the Context of Life and the Stages of Grief
Concept of Dying Well and the Role of Hospice Care
Differences Between Grief and the Tasks of Mourning
Professional Intervention Strategies for Working with Individuals Experiencing Loss
Differences Between Men, Women, and Children and Their Responses to Grief
Religious and Cultural Customs and Rituals
Loss Related Issues Involving Suicide and/or Other Traumatic Events and Personal Losses
Losses Not Related to Death
- Divorce
- Employment
- Addiction
- Illness