Internet-Based Grief Therapy Program for Bereaved Individuals at Risk: A Case Series Study

Abstract

Interest in internet-based interventions has increased considerably. Prolonged grief disorder is one of the subjects studied with this method. This study includes preliminary findings of the internet-based and therapist-supported prolonged grief intervention program developed in Turkish. The internet-based program consists of 10 written sessions, and after each session, written feedback is given to the participants by the practitioner. The program takes approximately 6-8 weeks. The preliminary effect of the program was handled in a proof-of-concept study style based on a case series design. Self-report measures were taken from the first eight participants who completed the program at four different times (pre-test, post-test, and 1 and 3-month follow-ups). In addition, the written contents of the first and last sessions were analysed by content analysis. As a result of the descriptive findings, remarkable decreases were observed in traumatic grief, global meaning violation, depression, and stress levels in a significant part of the participants between pre-post and follow-up measurements. Also, at least half of the participants had considerable increases in meaning reconstruction scores. In addition, the results of the content analysis indicated that following the intervention, the bereaved individuals expressed less negative and more positive content, as expected. These two data show that the intervention program is promising in reducing the negative symptoms of bereaved individuals and may yield good results with controlled designs for a broader range of participants.