Guidebook on Helping Persons with Mental Retardation Mourn

The grief language of persons with mental retardation discloses intellectual capacities that are no less powerful, complex, subtle, disturbing, deep, and spiritual than those revealed in the more discursive and dialectical grief language of persons without mental retardation. This book will assist readers in recognizing and understanding the behavioral language of grief among persons with mental retardation and in developing intervention plans to support them through their grief, in both the short and long term. The book contributes to an awareness of the significance of loss in the life experience of persons with mental retardation. Experiencing loss may be a very powerful vulnerability in their mental or psychological life, and dealing with this loss is a basic element in psychological health. There has been an enormous hole in the death and dying literature and in the mental retardation literature on the mourning behavior and needs of persons with mental retardation. This book fills that hole, and lays a foundation for grief support services, establishes standards of practice and care, and is an educational primer about the loss and mourning needs of persons with mental retardation. The book is directed to grief counselors and therapists, other mental health workers who work with persons with mental retardation, agencies that support persons with mental retardation, and advocates and family of persons with mental retardation. It includes carefully detailed guidelines for support, therapeutic intervention, family issues regarding a dying caregiver, and agency interventions and program development.Kauffman, Jeffrey is the author of 'Guidebook on Helping Persons with Mental Retardation Mourn', published 2004 under ISBN 9780895033000 and ISBN 0895033003.