The Analyst at the Morgue: Helping Families Deal With Traumatic Bereavement

Abstract

The RECOVER program of the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in Washington, D.C., provides free crisis support and early intervention bereavement counseling for families who arrive at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (the morgue) to identify their family members who have died suddenly from homicide, suicide, accidents, or were medically unattended at death. This unique program has worked with over 10,000 families in the past ten years. The bereavement workers provide practical support about burial and autopsies, coordination with the crisis response team, and a holding environment to deal with the acute bereavement and information about follow-up services for all next-of-kin including children. The approach is a preventive one designed to lessen the possibility to developing a complicated grief reaction that could result in deep depression, suicide, and acting out rage, and interfere with the capacity to love and to work. The varieties of reaction to sudden and traumatic loss are described along with poignant vignettes.

Notes

Bruce H. Sklarew is a psychoanalyst, co-editor of Analysts in the Trenches: Streets, Schools, War Zones, Associate Clinical Professor at Howard University Department of Psychiatry; Susan Ley is Executive Director of the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing; Stephanie Handel is Senior Therapist and Coordinator of RECOVER at the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing.