Statewide grief support groups provide much needed resource for parents coping with loss
LOUISVILLE — The death of one’s child is often the most devastating event a parent can experience. Loss of a loved one induces immense grief and upset and especially so when it is someone’s child. The death immediately results in considerable sadness, depression, insomnia, anger, feelings of loss, and often guilt. Feeling alone and isolated are common. Hopelessness may precipitate suicidal ideas, substance abuse, and personal dysfunction. Emerging anguish might harm personal, family, and occupational life.
When encountering bereaved people in a medical practice with major bereavement-related concerns or dysfunction, it is advised to recommend that such patients join a support group. This augments patient care. These people are in emotional crisis and can benefit by support from folks who know precisely what the death of a child feels like!
Physicians most likely to encounter patients in this condition are in specialties such as internal medicine, family medicine, maternal/fetal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, emergency medicine, trauma surgery, palliative care, or intensive care.
Grief support meeting attendance attenuates the severity of suffering, provides emotional comfort, documents that the person is not alone, and teaches personal methods to cope with the loss. It helps! One excellent support group is The Compassionate Friends. There are several chapters in Kentucky (see below). Many communities also have other grief-support resources, offered by religious, counseling, medical, or funeral services.
The Compassionate Friends is a peer-self-help group. They meet monthly, and no appointment, notification, or referral needed — just show up. There is no cost involved. Anyone with grief, including other family members, is welcomed following the death of a child of any age, even for a child who was an adult when they died. Attendance is to be an adjunct to your practice, not a replacement, to yield greater patient comfort.
Meetings are mutual-sharing, nurture-focused sessions facilitated by other group members, without professional leadership. Attendees gain stability from the communal, sharing about the death and related personal issues. Everyone there learns from one another and understands the emotional impact of grief. Joining support groups yields considerable benefit to those suffering bereavement.
The Compassionate Friends group honors and remembers the departed child. This gradually lightens the anguish of bereavement. They also model coping with the loss as people go into the future. Emotional recovery is a focus of the sessions, diminishes complicated grief, and encourages better function.
There are six groups of The Compassionate Friends throughout Kentucky
- LOUISVILLE: Meets 6:30–8PM, first Thursday of each month, at the St. Matthews’ City Hall, 3940 Grandview Avenue, room 116. On the first floor, just to right of the front door. Telephone Linda at 502.889.1629.
- LEXINGTON: Meets at 6:00–7:30PM, first Monday of each month at Berkshire Hathaway / deMovellan Properties, 620 Perimeter Drive, Suite 107. Telephone Mary at 859.771.1511.
- BARDSTOWN: Meets at 6PM, second Thursday of each month at St. Thomas Center, 870 Saint Thomas Lane. Telephone Mary at 502.827.4697.
- BOWLING GREEN: Meets 3:00–5:00PM, first Monday of each month at Lisa Rice Library, 1225 State Street. Telephone 270.681.0610.
- DANVILLE: Meets at 6:00PM, first Tuesday of each month, Heritage Hospice, 120 Enterprise Drive. Telephone Dana at 859.319.1419.
- PADUCAH: Meets at 2:00–4:00 PM, second Sunday of each month, St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church Cafeteria, 6705 Old Highway 45 S. Telephone Darla at 270.331.0883.
Steven Lippman, MD, Emeritus Professor, University of Louisville School of Medicine-psychiatry faculty since 1976. After his retirement in 2015, Lippman has been a regular volunteer as a primary care doctor at the Family Community Clinic of Louisville, Kentucky.