CHA Continuing Education

What do we know about grief that involves trauma? Is this kind of grief a “deeper shade of blue”? When a loss is sudden, violent, or stigmatized, the nature of grief is radically different from that which follows deaths that are anticipated, natural, and come at the end of a long life.

Over the last three decades, we’ve learned a great deal about grief and trauma from research that has elaborated and refined critical concepts. Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) describes the disruptive persistence of sadness and longing after a death, which often occurs after traumatic loss. But PGD doesn’t include symptoms of trauma in its diagnostic criteria. It focuses instead on the disruptive persistence of sadness and longing after a death, which certainly may occur after traumatic loss. Traumatic Grief (TG), in contrast, has been described as the experience in which horror combines with sadness and longing for the person who has died. While TG is not a formal diagnosis, the concept points to important areas of understanding and intervention. What people experience after a normative vs. traumatic loss may be no more equivalent than the colors blue and purple. These hues are related, but the added red pigment creates a whole new palette of experience, just as added elements of trauma create new dimensions of feeling to grief.

In this 5-week series, clinicians will learn about grief in ways that enhance their clinical care with people who have experienced traumatic loss. Presentations will address traumatic grief as a clinical concept, review tools for assessment, and identify interventions for loss after suicide, homicide, overdose and collective losses from war, displacement or disease—all of which are particularly urgent mental health issues. Faculty will explore psychotherapeutic interventions that address prolonged grief, trauma and the healing effects of community. Participants will increase their confidence and skills to effectively address traumatic grief in their patients.

Patricia Harney, PhD (Course Director)
Co-Interim Chief of Psychology and Director of Psychology Internship Training, Cambridge Health Alliance; Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Holly Aldrich, MSW, LICSW
Founding Director, Center for Homicide Bereavement, Cambridge Health Alliance; Therapist in private practice, Cambridge MA

Fanta Atkinson, PhD, LMHC
Director, Center for Homicide Bereavement, Cambridge Health Alliance

Malak Rafla, MD
Staff Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Cambridge Health Alliance; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Part-time, Harvard Medical School

Joseph Rosanksy, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CHA Center for Mindfulness and Compassion; Staff Psychologist, Cambridge Health Alliance

Jane Tillman, PhD
Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research, Austen Riggs Center; Clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Austen Riggs Center