Essential and beneficial elements of school based intervention programs for grieving students

Abstract

There are volumes of existing literature which discuss various grief interventions for use in schools. The feelings and ideas of researchers and grief specialists are very important and valuable for individuals, such as school counselors, who work with students. However, the existing literature does appear to be lacking in the amount of work done that aims to discover what the students themselves feel and think regarding grief interventions. The purpose of the present study was to determine students' and counselors' perceptions of the essential and beneficial elements of school based intervention programs for grieving students in schools (K-12). A survey was completed by 100 students and 44 professional school counselors. Subjects were asked to answer questions related to grief interventions, supportive comments, and other related topics. Results of the present study showed that school counselors rated all of the given grief intervention services as more beneficial than did students. Also, on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being “most helpful”) students gave their school a helpfulness rating of 5.72 while counselors reported a much higher mean of 8.03. The differences between the two groups of subjects will be discussed in regards to intervention services and supportive comments/actions preferred, as well as possible explanations for the results. Suggestions for future research in this area complete this thesis