Specialized Training for Counselors Who Offer Grief Counseling to their Clients

The death of a loved one can be an extremely distressing situation. Whether the person is a spouse, child or parent, when a death occurs there can be a range of emotional and physical responses. While sadness and grief is normal as a reaction for most people, for others, the degree of distress and grief may be so intense that grief counseling may become necessary.

What is Grief Counseling?

Whenever a person experiences loss of any form his or her body responds to the stress physically and emotionally. Age, culture and even gender may contribute to the intensity of emotions and how a person responds to the grief. It has been suggested that a person will typically pass through a number of stages of grief that range from denial to acceptance of the loss. Along the way, they may also experience anger, depression and bargaining as a means of dealing with their grief. Grief counseling assists an individual in passing through these stages.

Who Provides Counseling Services?

Bereavement counseling is sometimes offered to clients of funeral services or through hospice services for the families of people who have lost a loved one. People who go through other types of loss (for example amputation of a limb, chronic illness or divorce) experience the same stages of grief that someone who has lost a family. Often the need for referral is recognized by a general practitioner who can provide their patient with a referral to a psychologist or other counselor.

Specialized Counseling Services

Most counselors learn how to deal with grief counseling as part of their basic training. However, because of the variety of the ages and backgrounds of their clients, they may need to develop specialty skills to assist clients with special needs. Counselors may choose to provide specialized support to their younger clients and help them deal with child or adolescent grief. Specialized courses for counselors are provided online or through classes taken in a traditional classroom.

Resolving Grief and Promoting Self Help

Counselors train to assist people deal with their own problems by supporting them to make decisions and to move on with their lives. Opportunities to develop specialized skills will help a counselor provide excellent grief counseling and other services to their clients and client families. If you’d like to make a career out of helping people overcome their grief, then look into one of the professional training courses that can be found online.

Job Security as a Health Care Professional

When you hear the words health care professionals you may just think of physicians or registered nurses. Not only are the positions available in health care much more diverse, but so are the types of treatments and care that are available. Over half of the fastest growing occupations are related to the health care industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Baby Boomers

Baby boomers are getting older every day. They estimate that there are about 75 million Americans that were born in the years known as the baby boom. If many of the people that were born from 1945 – 1964 are getting older then they are going to need more access to health care benefits in the near future, and we’ll need more professionals to treat them.

Longer Life Expectancy

People are living longer and longer. Some reports estimate that we are living on average 10 years longer than previous generations. If this is true, that is a possible 10 more years that we may need health care as well. Of course the overall goal is to lead a healthy life, but we all need help from time to time, especially the older we get. Let’s face the facts, the older we are the more time we have for things to go wrong.

Technology

Technology is advancing rapidly, for better or for worse. With some technology we can alleviate what was causing our illness all together, but this not always the case. Sometimes technology just allows us to live longer with it. Either way, technology has been proven to improve the quality of life for many people and can help them live longer as well.

Another way technology is impacting health care is through paperless billing and records. With computers being used to store and transfer so much patient data we will need people to manage and secure it as well.

Job Security in Health Care

As you see, there are many reasons why the health care industry is growing and why it is a great option for people looking for work. Whether you are looking to change careers or are just out of school you can get many health career related jobs with only an associate’s degree. Becoming a part of a health care professional team can not only give you the job security you have been searching for but also the knowledge that you are helping people improve their lives and live longer.