Hospitals and Healthcare

After losing her son to suicide six years ago, Kate Slatter thought she knew how to handle complex grief. But it was after the sudden death of another close family member that she found herself overwhelmed and in need of an end-of-life expert carer.

Understanding how loss affects our brain and body can help us realize that healing from a loss takes time, and we need to be gentle during the grieving process.

There are many social assumptions about how to best ‘get through’ grief. We interview 95 people about their experiences of loss and found we need to rethink what grief looks and feels like.

On my to-do list sits one job that’s been there for months and hasn’t been ticked off.

A social worker explains ‘living loss’ and provides five ways for clinicians to help patients, and their families, acknowledge and move through their grief.

Look, I get it. People tell me that they don’t want to make it worse by bringing it up, by saying the wrong thing that would cause more heartache.