Cross-Cultural Considerations in Supporting Bereaved Students

This chapter provides school-based practitioners with practical evidence-based guidelines for developing culturally relevant responses to support bereaved students of diverse cultures. The chapter highlights culturally competent approaches, explores key cultural considerations for assessing the significance of culture in the student’s life, helps school-based practitioners identify unique and important cultural values, beliefs, and practices, encourages cultural conversations, and facilitates healthy grieving through cultural understanding and appreciation. Culture is often a major determinant in how one perceives and navigates the world in circumstances of grief and loss. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for school-based practitioners to know how best to support culturally diverse bereaved students. The importance of the practitioner’s developing his or her own cultural awareness and cultural humility is emphasized.

The Importance of Assessment in Supporting Bereaved Students

This chapter provides a framework allowing school-based mental health practitioners to assess and track characteristics of grief in bereaved students. Several types of assessments and tools (observations, structured interviews, and a range of rating scales) are discussed as a part of a three-tiered support framework to assess and monitor student progress over time. Current approaches to assisting bereaved students vary widely and may over-serve or under-serve students based on limited understanding of grief. There are also individual differences in the grieving process. School-based professionals must conduct assessments that enable them to identify individual needs and potential symptoms of complicated grief that may affect a child’s functioning at school.

Using Play Therapy to Support Bereaved Students

Using the tenets of child-centered play therapy, this chapter describes interventions that school-based mental health professionals can use to support bereaved children. Children’s reactions to death, and the interventions that professionals can use, vary based on their developmental stage. Strategies are presented for helping children process the early period of bereavement, facilitate a developmentally and culturally appropriate understanding of death, promote adjustment to changes in family constellation and dynamics, and memorialize loved ones. Instructions are provided for using play techniques to help children organize, make sense of, and express their losses in a concrete manner. The play interventions described in this chapter involve using a sand tray and miniature figures to help a child prepare for a memorial service and to start to understand the concept of death, using puppets to explore the changes in family dynamics that occur after a death, and creating a memorial book.

Using Music Therapy-Based Songwriting to Support Bereaved Students

This chapter focuses on therapeutic songwriting approaches and techniques for supporting bereaved students. Music therapy-based songwriting offers grieving students a myriad of opportunities to validate, identify, normalize, and express thoughts and emotions, as well as to understand, feel, remember, integrate, and grow. An overview of the “VINE principle” (validation, identification, normalization, and expression of feelings and emotions) is provided as a useful way to support healthy grieving. The Grief Process Scale is an evidence-based measure of five grief process areas (understanding, feeling, remembering, integrating, and growing) and has been used in music therapy to document changes in core behaviors, thoughts and feelings regarding a child’s loved one, and how the child is coping since the death. Recommendations for those leading music interventions are included, as well as song resources and tips for non-music therapists.

Using Cognitive and Behavioral Methods to Support Bereaved Students

This chapter addresses cognitive and behavioral interventions for students experiencing grief and bereavement. The evidence-based treatment package called Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is covered in detail. The components of this treatment package for bereaved students are discussed. Other group treatment options are also mentioned. Practical considerations and implementation issues for this treatment package are reviewed.

Using Grief Support Groups to Support Bereaved Students

This chapter provides a template for conducting school-based grief support groups for elementary and secondary students. The template supplies school-based mental health professionals with an easy-to-replicate structure for hosting psychoeducational strengths-based grief support group sessions. Guidance is provided on how to ensure a smooth-running group in the school setting and how to handle sensitive issues such as student confidentiality. Special considerations for different age groups are offered. School-based bereavement groups educate students about grief, normalize the grief process, teach healthy coping skills for managing grief reactions, and facilitate connections with other students who are experiencing similar losses.

The Role of Digital and Social Media in Supporting Bereaved Students

This chapter describes the benefits and challenges that can occur with adolescents’ use of digital media and social media in relation to a death, beginning with the pros and cons of death notification via digital and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Digital and social media resources can be used to gain information about grief, to facilitate the provision of tangible assistance to the bereaved, and to offer emotional support. The use of social media as a tool for survivor advocacy will be discussed. Online resources available to facilitate cybersafety are covered. A list of questions to facilitate conversations with students about their use and impact of digital and social media use is included.

Defining Loss

This chapter addresses general knowledge about grief and bereavement in school-age children. Foundational information is offered to support how we define loss from individual, relational, cultural, and developmental perspectives. Childhood bereavement is a complex and highly individualized experience that is influenced by a variety of developmental, personal, and situational factors. Research on protective factors is highlighted, coupled with recommendations for practical strategies to use with bereaved students. Applying developmentally relevant resources designed to facilitate positive adaptation can help diminish negative and complex grief responses and promote healthy coping after the death of a loved one.

The Importance of Supporting Bereaved Students at School

This chapter offers an overview of the book’s contents. Key research highlighting the importance of supporting bereaved students at school is provided. Each chapter is summarized. The unique emphasis of this book, which focuses both on foundational knowledge and practical interventions for supporting students dealing with grief, is highlighted. This book provides school-based professionals and university students with tools and easy-to-implement evidence-based interventions for helping bereaved students that can be integrated into their daily practice.

Using Bibliotherapy to Support Bereaved Students

This chapter describes bibliotherapy, an intervention based on the tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy and solution-focused therapy, as a developmentally appropriate strategy to address grieving children’s emotional needs. Bibliotherapy incorporates literature into the counseling process to address four basic tasks of grief. This chapter discusses key guidelines for implementing a bibliotherapy lesson with bereaved youth. The importance of selecting books and develop activities that align with the bereaved child’s developmental needs, the family’s cultural and religious beliefs, and other facets of the child’s experience is highlighted. The chapter includes recommended books and associated activities that address the tasks of grief and facilitate children’s expression of feelings. A sample bibliotherapy lesson plan is included.