Are you treating your patient for depression when they truly need grief counseling? How does one treat grief in a masochistic personality? What is the potential impact of treating a bereaved person for depression? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented amounts of loss and bereavement, and mental health clinicians are grappling with differentiating between grief, depression and cases where both are at work.
Accomplished author, psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Nancy McWilliams of the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology joins Mind Dive hosts Dr. Bob Boland and Dr. Kerry Horrell on this episode to discuss the nuances of treatment in these cases. Dr. McWilliams speaks to the potential consequences of treating a patient for depression when grief treatment would be more appropriate and how that could further the patient’s feelings of hopelessness. All this and much more during this discussion.
“What we need to do with people who are grieving is just bear witness. It can feel very hard on a therapist not to do something,” said McWilliams, “To absorb pain is much harder than becoming a cheerleader for some technical way of dealing with the emotion.”
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Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.