An Attachment-Informed Approach to Adolescent Grief Therapy

2:00 p.m. Eastern | 11:00 a.m. Pacific (1.5 hours)

Presentation Description

Loss and grief experiences during adolescence often have a profound dysregulating and destabilizing effect. Adolescents have not developed the social or emotional maturity to fully incorporate and process loss and grief experiences into a coherent worldview. This may impact the important tasks of adolescence such as identity formation, which could already be unstable depending on an adolescent’s existing attachment style. Effective attachment-informed approaches based on the establishment of a trusting therapeutic relationship, and co-construction of new personal narratives may aid in mitigating the long-term effects of adolescent loss and grief experiences.

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About the Presenters

Pamela A. Malone, Ph.D., LCSW, FT (Fellow in Thanatology) has over 30 years of clinical experience in a variety of settings. She maintains a private clinical practice in which she provides individual, couples, and family therapy, as well as adolescent groups. She is also a clinical supervisor for master’s level clinicians and is Assistant Professor-in-Practice at the University of Texas Arlington. Research, presentation, and publications focus on loss and grief, trauma, natural disaster survival, and supervision. Her book, Counseling Adolescents through Loss, Grief, and Trauma was published by Routledge in 2016.

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Objectives

Learning Objective Two: Participants will be able to explain the impact of adolescent grief on attachment as well as attachment style on loss and grief reactions

Learning Objective Three: Participants will be able to explain the impact of adolescent grief on attachment as well as attachment style on loss and grief reactions