The effectiveness of grief coping training in a group way in improving the experience of grief caused by covid-19 in women of Yazd city

Abstract

Introduction: The high prevalence of the Covid-19 disease and its rapid infection, the imposition of restrictions, and the high mortality had many negative effects on the psychological and social aspects of bereaved families. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of group counseling to deal with grief caused by Covid-19 regarding mournful women in Yazd. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The statistical population consisted of women with grief experience over losing their husbands due to Covid-19 in 2021. Through available sampling method, 30 participants were selected and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Data was collected through Grief Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) by Barrett and Scott (1998). Moreover, the package of confrontation with mourning, a lived experience of mourning women in Yazd (Kalantari et al., 2021), was performed on the experimental group for ten 90-minute sessions. Covariance with repeated measurements and SPSS version 26 software were used in data analysis. Results: The research findings showed that the average score of grief experience in the experimental group was significantly lower than control group in posttest droup (p<0.001). Group training and intervention program could improve mourning experience in the experimental group compared to the control group in bereaved women. Conclusion: Educational intervention based on lived experience of mourning women in Yazd can be used as one of the effective methods to improve mourning experience.