Gain tools to help your patients, clients, parishioners, family or friends deal with grief. This webinar reviews the theory and techniques behind life review and reminiscence therapies focusing on the
ways that such techniques can assist meaning-making at the end-of-life. The webinar also discusses strategies that can be utilized in cases where life reviews may be problematic or psychologically threatening.

Agenda

Objectives

1. Differentiate life review from reminiscence.
2. Discuss life review and reminiscence as instruments of meaning-making and offer a rationale for the therapeutic benefit of such procedures at the end of life.
3. Identify seven therapeutic benefits of life review and reminiscence.
4. Identify potential dangers in life review and reminiscence.
5. Discuss at least six different strategies for life review and reminiscence.

Outline

• Meaning-Making at the End of Life
  • Role of Meaning-Making at the End of Life
  • The Spiritual Needs of Individuals Who Are Dying
• Life Review and Reminiscence: Underlying Theory
  • Differences between Life Review and Reminiscence
  • Value of Life Review and Reminiscence
    • Meaning-Making
    • Enhances Mood
    • Establishes Time and Role Parity
    • Maintains a Continuity of Identity
    • Offers Therapeutic Insight
    • Reinforces Self-Esteem
    • Bolsters Community
  • Dangers of Life Review and Reminiscence
    • Reliving Trauma
    • Personality Counter-Indications
    • Relational Counter-Indications
• Doing Life Review and Reminiscence
  • Techniques for Life Review and Reminiscence
    • Photographs and Memorabilia
    • Music
    • Creative Expressions
    • Genealogies and Genograms
    • Pilgrimages and Reunions
    • Age Lines
  • Employing All Senses

Panelists

• Trudy Holman, Director, Hamilton’s Academy of Grief and Loss
• J. Jeffrey Means, MDiv, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Behavioral Medicine, DMU

Sponsors

This activity is co-sponsored by Des Moines University and HCI Care Services, formerly called Hospice of Central Iowa.