> Graduates of these programs might be even more prone to whine, "Just let = > us do what we do best," when challenged by data.
Let's look at that data again, although others here have already adequately dissected the problems in this study. According to the article: This study used data from a sample of community-based bereaved individuals to examine the course of disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance as described by Jacobs from 1 to 24 months postloss. -So why not include people from the very onset of loss, given that the dominant psychological reaction is supposed to be acceptance? How interesting that we should exclude people who would be in the throes of their deepest grief, perhaps deepest denial. Then we read: Because approximately 94% of US deaths result from natural causes (eg, vehicle crashes, suicide),15 deaths from unnatural causes (eg, car crashes, suicide) were excluded thereby enabling the results to be generalized to the most common types of deaths. -Removing those who are dealing with profound grief makes sense if you want to focus on the most common path of grief, but the problem in extrapolating that to grief counseling is that these individuals are very unlikely to seek out grief counseling! And then: Individuals who met the criteria for complicated grief disorder also were excluded so that the results would represent normal bereavement reactions. -Complicated grief disorder would very much characterize your typical grief client/patient/. So again, why the paradigm shift for a study that isnt very relevant to the kind of work you do, with the kind of person you usually do it with? There is no whining here, there's just appropriate indignation that a study that isn't relevant to normative grief work and clients/patients is inexplicably supposed to "challenge" and even change that work. In order to properly challenge, one must have enough knowledge of the issues in the first place. Otherwise a lot of time is wasted on ignorance. Jim Guinee --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
