Grief memoirs: The familiarity of helping professionals with the genre and its potential incorporation into grief therapy.

ABSTRACT

The grief memoir is a fast-developing genre that in recent decades has become a popular form of public mourning and self-therapy in many Western cultures, especially in the United States and Great Britain. We surveyed 76 helping professionals to assess if the grief memoir is a genre with which they are familiar and whether they employ such narratives as an adjunct in their work with the bereaved. Most bibliotherapeutic studies focus either on self-help or affective literature. This study is unique in evaluating a life writing genre which promises to combine the therapeutic benefits of both.