Models of grief integration: Mediators of Mourning

Models of grief integration: Mediators of Mourning

Overview

History of development

Detail

Mediators of mourning (Worden 1991, 2009)

Worden identified a list of context factors that impact how we grieve — referred to as “mediators of mourning”.  

They can be a catalyst for personal reflection and understanding.  

In order to comprehend why people manage the four tasks of mourning differently, it helps to appreciate how these tasks are mediated by various factors.
Refer to the next slide for Worden’s “mediators of mourning”.

Worden (2009) cautioned counsellors to use the concept of tasks of mourning as a way to understand the fluid process that is grief, rather than as any type of stage to be worked in a linear fashion. 

In an effort to assist counsellors working with the bereaved to accomplish the four tasks, Worden created a nine-step protocol for doing grief therapy. 

Following are the nine steps designed to be applied within the individual clinician’s theoretical framework. 

  1. Rule out physical disease.
  2. Set up a contract and establish an alliance.
  3. Revive memories of the deceased.
  4. Assess for completion of the four grief tasks: acceptance of the loss, experience the pain of grief, adjust to life without the deceased, and reinvest emotional energy into another relationship.
  5. Deal with effect or lack of effect stimulated by memories.
  6. Explore and diffuse linking objects: items used by the mourner to keep the deceased alive.
  7. Acknowledge the finality of the loss.
  8. Deal with the fantasy of ending the grieving.
  9. Help the mourner say a final goodbye.
Source: Complicated Grief: A Case Study of Pathological Bereavement Dissertation In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by LUCINDA C. WOERNER