Loading...
Loading...
Therapy role-play · PGDT
Most grief eases with time. For some people it does not; it stays intense and disabling. Katherine Shear’s Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy (formerly Complicated Grief Treatment) helps those people come to terms with the loss and re-engage with life. You practise assessing grief with care, and the core steps of the therapy.
Why this therapy
Most grief eases with time. Sometimes it stays intense and disabling well beyond what the person’s own culture would expect: at least 6 months after the loss in ICD-11, or 12 months for adults in DSM-5-TR. For those people, prolonged grief therapy helps them accept the loss and re-engage with life. Counselling everyone who is bereaved does not help on average, and calling ordinary mourning a disorder is a mistake. Therapy is for the minority whose grief has become prolonged.
Each protocol follows its published treatment model, and so does your feedback.
Simulated clients are a training aid. They do not replace supervised work with real clients.
Each one is reviewed in your debrief, with one concrete thing to try next time.
Ask about the loss with warmth, and screen for prolonged grief. Duration alone is not a diagnosis; ask about the symptoms, and about what mourning looks like in the client’s culture.
Describe how grief normally works, and what gets it stuck. The goal is never to “let go” or “move on”; a continuing bond with the person who died is healthy.
Help the client approach the memories they avoid, and bring them back down before the session ends. Never leave someone flooded.
Support goals and re-engagement with life alongside the loss work. A therapy that is only about the death stalls.
Ask directly about suicidal thoughts, including the wish to join the person who died. Do not assume that faith language means intent, and do not assume it rules intent out. Ask.
The same client carries across modes. Start where you feel comfortable, then stretch.
Each client comes with a history, a presentation and measures. Read the referral as you would on placement, then begin.
The client responds to how you work. Make your mistakes here, where they cost nothing; hints come only if you ask for them.
A clear debrief on the core skills of your model (the CTS-R for CBT). Then take any one skill into a focused drill and work on it until it holds.
A diagnosis in ICD-11 and DSM-5-TR for grief that stays intense and persistent, and disrupts daily life well beyond what is expected.
No. Grief is the natural response to loss. Prolonged grief disorder describes the minority whose grief stays intense and disabling long after the loss.
Practise PGDT with us
Leave your details and our team will contact you on WhatsApp to set up your practice, answer your questions and find the right programme for you.