People who have experienced a traumatic bereavement are being invited to join a free grief therapy group.

This includes bereavement caused by suicide, homicide, fatal accidents or disasters that happened no later than October 2017.

The pilot project, run by the University of Roehampton, is offering around five to seven free places in their ‘Meaning in loss’ pilot group to people who live locally, as part of an innovative new therapy research programme aimed at helping people with their traumatic loss.

The group therapy will be based at the Centre for Research in Social and Psychological Transformation (CREST) Therapy clinic at Roehampton’s Whiteland campus, which currently provides students and members of the general public with support for depression-related issues.

Dr Edith Steffen, a lecturer in counselling psychology and practising counselling psychologist at the University of Roehampton said: “As a researcher and practitioner, I’ve found that people who have a particularly difficult time coping with their bereavement, as is often the case for people who have suffered a traumatic loss, can find it very hard to access support; this may be for a number of reasons including ongoing distress and difficulty reaching out or not knowing where to turn to.

“In this pilot group, participants will receive a new psychological therapy that is especially for people who are experiencing prolonged or complicated grief. The therapy aims to help people cope with their distressing experiences, make sense of what has happened and access what was positive in their relationship with the deceased person so they can move forward with their lives in helpful ways.”

The pilot group will run one evening a week for 12 weeks, starting at the beginning of May, and there will be further grief therapy groups when the intervention is rolled out as part of a larger trial later in the year.

Anyone interested in taking part in the pilot group should contact Dr Steffen directly by email at edith.steffen@roehampton.ac.uk or call 020 8392 3527.