Spiritual Counseling for Bereaved Parents

Author/s: Nur Başer Baykal

DOI: 10.12738/spc.2018.1.0039 

Year: 2018 Vol: 3 Number: 1

Abstract

This review aims to understand the psychological conditions of families who have lost one or more of their children, identify topics that can be studied with parents, explain how spirituality can be used while working with bereaved parents, and provide information about how child mourning can be considered within spiritual counseling. This study also presents spiritual resources that can be utilized while working with religious families. The main purpose is to create a framework and to contribute to the counseling process by offering spiritual resources to counselors who will work with religious families that have experienced child loss. The review explains the process of grief and grief theories before discussing topics identified on the basis of the meaning reconstruction model, one of the grief theories, from a spiritual counseling perspective. This will demonstrate that there are spiritually oriented techniques that can be used while working with bereaved families.

Keywords
Spiritual counseling, Grief, Child bereavement, Meaning reconstruction model