Helping Teens Work Through Grief

When teen experience the death of a loved one, their already unsettled lives are often further complicated by intense emotions, fluctuating hormones, and changing relationships with friends, families, and themselves. During these especially trying times, adolescents look to trusted adults for help in understanding their feelings. Helping Teens Work Through Grief is a resource for adults who are interested in offering teen grief groups, a comforting and effective approach to grief that has helped countless teens cope with their losses.
The second edition of this text educates the reader about teen grief, trauma, social support, and adolescent development, and provides practical tips and strategies for forming teen grief groups. This book features a wide range of group activities such as icebreakers and drawing and writing exercises, along with more individually based self-care strategies, and journaling activities. Sample letters, brochures, and accompanying handouts for teen participants help group facilitators develop and conduct a support group, and a comprehensive additional resources section directs teens and adults to other bodies of information.
This resource provides teachers, counselors, psychologists, social workers, hospice personnel, and religious youth workers with the necessary information to work with teens in a group setting, and can also be used informally by a concerned parent, neighbor, or friend of a grieving teen.

Mary Kelly Perschy, M.S. has been involved with grieving teens since 1984 when there was little information readily available about teen grief. In her varied career, Perschy has served as an administrator (of Bereavement Services at Hospice of Howard County), trainer, counselor and facilitator of grief groups at hospices and schools in the Baltimore metropolitan area.