Comfort and Empathy of Experienced Counselors in Client Situations Involving Death and Loss

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that client issues related to death and dying are more problematic than other serious client issues for beginning counselors. The present study attempts to ascertain whether this holds true for counselors who have considerable experience counseling on issues of death or loss, and whether counselor comfort with and empathy toward death-related situations is related to demographic, professional, or personal variables such as death anxiety. Seventy-one experienced death counselors were asked to rate their degree of comfort with a variety of presenting client scenarios. Counselors were also asked to respond to four case vignettes, two of which were death related and two of which were serious, but non-death related. Results indicated that the experienced death counselors in our study were actually more comfortable and empathic with counseling vignettes that involved death and dying issues and that their level of empathy with such clients was positively correlated with their years of professional training and years of experience with death counseling. However, our findings also suggest that counselors whose case loads consist principally of the dying or bereaved may be less comfortable and empathic with other presenting problems.