Bereavement

An older person may grieve due to a decline in physical, mental or cognitive health. It is also important to acknowledge that a client’s family members might start to grieve before their death. Healthdirect has a webpage on understanding anticipatory grief. CareSearch provides an overview about abnormal grief. The Palliative Care Bridge from HammondCare also has some educational videos on bereavement and complicated grief. palliAGED offers a variety of resources to learn more about grief, loss and bereavement. There are links to a guide for assessing bereavement and support, and a tool to distinguish between depression and grief.

What is Prolonged Grief Disorder?

“Intense and persistent symptoms of distress following the death of a family member or friend. Significant mental and physical health problems may be present, for example, insomnia, depression, cardiac problems, substance misuse, cancer, suicide, depressed immune function and work and social impairment. Also known as complicated grief.”^3(p37)

ELDAC Toolkit Educational Video

Watch the ELDAC After Death Care and Bereavement educational video will help you to acknowledging grief and loss; providing space and time for family/carers to ‘be’ with their loved one and recognising potentially complicated bereavement.

Family Resources

Palliative Care Australia

Palliative Care Australia has an Understanding Grief Brochure (pdf 1004kb) which explains grief and the grieving process and gives suggestions for managing grief and helping others through their grief

The Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement (ACGB)

The ACGB offers education for the wider community to improve grief and bereavement knowledge. Education and training programs are offered as seminars, workshops, courses, conferences, webinars and customised training that meet the specific needs of organisations and agencies. You can also find more information on bereavement support.

Also the ACGB website has available the Bereavement Support Standards for Specialist Palliative Care Services that was designed for use by professionals to support all carers and people going through bereavement who have an increased risk of developing prolonged or complicated grief or have current psychosocial and/or spiritual distress. This set of set of bereavement support standards was developed in collaboration with the Victorian Government Department of Health and the Centre for Palliative Care.

Page updated 29 May 2019