Instrumental Grief and Caregiving

There are different ways of expressing grief. In her ground breaking work, Eleanor Silverberg describes the act of providing care to chronically ill family members as an expression of grief.  She took the styles of instrumental and intuitive grieving originally devised for death related circumstances and applied them into the caregiving experience, especially in dealing with progressive and chronic conditions. 

In this 15 minute episode, Dr. Kenneth Doka, a leading expert in thanatology and grief counseling is Eleanor's guest, speaking about the instrumental style of grieving that he was involved in developing and writing about as co-author of the (2000) book Men Don't Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief and then the (revised 2010) book Grieving Beyond Gender: Understanding the Ways Men and Women Mourn . 

Eleanor Silverberg applied these styles and other grief models intended for death related circumstances to family caregivers in her 2007 article Introducing the 3-A Grief Intervention Model for Dementia Caregivers:: Acknowledge, Assess, Assist.

Preview of Eleanor Silverberg's books Caregiving with Strength including the Foreword written by Dr. Kenneth Doka and Keeping It Together: How to Cope as a Family Caregiver without Losing Your Sanity can be found on the website. www.eleanorsilverberg.com