Grief Counseling Training in the United States and South Korea: An Online Intervention for Therapists and Graduate Students

Abstract

Most therapists work with grieving individuals despite having received little to no training in grief counseling. Therapists also reported using outdated and non-empirically supported models in their work with bereaved clients. To prevent the provision of uninformed grief therapy, an international team of scholars in the United States and South Korea developed the 3-Factor Grief Counseling Model and an innovative online intervention to educate therapists and graduate students about grief and grief counseling. The therapists and graduate students living in the United States (n = 324) and those living in South Korea (n = 198) who completed the intervention reported more grief counseling knowledge and more confidence in working with grieving clients than those in a control condition. Participants appreciated learning new information about grief and grief counseling, the 3-Factor Grief Counseling Model, and the structure or quality of the intervention. Suggestions for improvement included a more interactive format/additional role plays in the United States, and more in-depth information in South Korea. This online intervention provides an accessible and fiscally sustainable model for future, widespread educational efforts to improve therapists’ ability to provide culturally sensitive grief counseling to bereaved clients in the United States and South Korea.