Complicated grief in the South African context: a social work perspective
Abstract
Social work in South Africa in the last decade has been shaped by the White Paper for
SocialWelfare (Ministry forWelfare and Population Development, 1997) which promotes
developmental social services and constitutes both traditional social work and social developmental
practices. Little consideration is given in social work literature and within the
developmental welfare approach on the bereaved person whose social functioning is
impaired by the death experience. South Africa has a generalised HIV epidemic and currently
ranks the third highest in the world in terms of the tuberculosis burden. Fatal motor
vehicle accidents are a common phenomenon and crime-related deaths are reported
daily. Although loss and bereavement may be included in graduate social work education
in South Africa, social workers in practice are often not familiar with grief-related intervention.
Social work is concerned with loss and therefore also with death and aims to
bring a system approach to dying. Grief is regarded as a normal process after the death
of a significant person. There is, however, evidence that 10–20 per cent of the bereaved
persons may experience prolonged, traumatic or complicated grief. This article explores
complicated grief from a South African social work perspective. The discussion starts
off with conceptualising complicated grief in South Africa and clarification of the concepts
of loss, normal and complicated grief. This is followed by an overview of some
risk factors for developing complicated grief. Lastly, the focus is on the role of social
work when grief becomes complicated. More research is needed on social work intervention
with reference to complicated grief in South Africa.
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- Faculty of Health Sciences [2376]