Support group for losing a parent

SAMHSA’s National Helpline | SAMHSA

Your browser is not supported

Switch to Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari

Main page content

SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
Also visit the online treatment locator.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.

Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.

The service is open 24/7, 365 days a year.

English and Spanish are available if you select the option to speak with a national representative. Currently, the 435748 (HELP4U) text messaging service is only available in English.

In 2020, the Helpline received 833,598 calls. This is a 27 percent increase from 2019, when the Helpline received a total of 656,953 calls for the year.

The referral service is free of charge. If you have no insurance or are underinsured, we will refer you to your state office, which is responsible for state-funded treatment programs. In addition, we can often refer you to facilities that charge on a sliding fee scale or accept Medicare or Medicaid. If you have health insurance, you are encouraged to contact your insurer for a list of participating health care providers and facilities.

The service is confidential. We will not ask you for any personal information. We may ask for your zip code or other pertinent geographic information in order to track calls being routed to other offices or to accurately identify the local resources appropriate to your needs.

No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.

Suggested Resources
What Is Substance Abuse Treatment? A Booklet for Families
Created for family members of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse problems. Answers questions about substance abuse, its symptoms, different types of treatment, and recovery. Addresses concerns of children of parents with substance use/abuse problems.
It's Not Your Fault (NACoA) (PDF | 12 KB)
Assures teens with parents who abuse alcohol or drugs that, "It's not your fault!" and that they are not alone. Encourages teens to seek emotional support from other adults, school counselors, and youth support groups such as Alateen, and provides a resource list.

After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Your Family Member After Treatment in the Emergency Department
Aids family members in coping with the aftermath of a relative's suicide attempt. Describes the emergency department treatment process, lists questions to ask about follow-up treatment, and describes how to reduce risk and ensure safety at home.
Family Therapy Can Help: For People in Recovery From Mental Illness or Addiction
Explores the role of family therapy in recovery from mental illness or substance abuse. Explains how family therapy sessions are run and who conducts them, describes a typical session, and provides information on its effectiveness in recovery.
For additional resources, please visit the SAMHSA Store.

Last Updated: 08/30/2022

Recovery and Recovery Support | SAMHSA

Recovery and Resilience

Resilience refers to an individual’s ability to cope with change and adversity. Resilience develops over time and gives an individual the capacity not only to cope with life’s challenges but also to be better prepared for the next stressful situation. Psychological resilience, the ability to cope with adversity and to adapt to stressful life events, varies widely from person to person and depends on environmental as well as personal factors. It refers to positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain mental and physical health despite participating in stressful situations. Resilience is playing up those protective factors so they can outweigh the risk factors. Optimism and the ability to remain hopeful are essential to resilience and the process of recovery.

Because recovery is a highly individualized process, recovery services and supports must be age appropriate and offered over the life course and flexible enough to ensure cultural relevancy. What may work for adults in recovery may be very different for youth or older adults in recovery. For example, the promotion of resiliency in young people, and the nature of social supports, peer mentors, and recovery coaching for adolescents and transitional age youth are different than recovery support services for adults and older adults.

Recovery and Relationships

The process of recovery is supported through relationships and social networks. This often involves family members who become the champions of their loved one’s recovery. They provide essential support to their family member’s journey of recovery and similarly experience the moments of positive healing as well as the difficult challenges. Families of people in recovery may experience adversities in their social, occupational, and financial lives, as well as in their overall quality of family life.

These experiences can lead to increased family stress, guilt, shame, anger, fear, anxiety, loss, grief, and isolation. The concept of resilience in recovery is also vital for family members who need access to intentional supports that promote their health and well-being. The support of peers and friends is also crucial in engaging and supporting individuals in recovery.

Peer support assists individuals to engage or stay connected to the recovery process through a shared understanding, respect, and mutual empowerment. Peer support extends beyond the reach of clinical treatment into the everyday environment providing non-clinical, strengths-based support. This relationship can help lay the foundation for SAMHSA’s four dimensions of recovery.

Recovery Support

SAMHSA advanced recovery support systems to promote partnering with people in recovery from mental and substance use disorders and their family members to guide the behavioral health system and promote individual, program, and system-level approaches that foster health and resilience; increase housing to support recovery; reduce barriers to employment, education, and other life goals; and secure necessary social supports in their chosen community.

Recovery support is provided in various settings. Recovery support services help people enter into and navigate systems of care, remove barriers to recovery, stay engaged in the recovery process, and live full lives in communities of their choice.

Recovery support services include culturally and linguistically appropriate services that assist individuals and families working toward recovery from mental and/or substance use problems. They incorporate a full range of social, legal, and other services (PDF | 409 KB). that facilitate recovery, wellness, and linkage to and coordination among service providers, and other supports shown to improve quality of life for people (and their families) in and seeking recovery.

Recovery support services may be provided before, during, or after clinical treatment, or may be provided to individuals who are not in treatment but seek support services.

These services, provided by professionals and peers, are delivered through a variety of community and faith-based groups, treatment providers, schools, and other specialized services. The broad range of service delivery options ensures the life experiences of all people are valued and represented.

For example, in the United States there are 34 recovery high schools that help reduce the risk in high school environments for youth with substance use disorders. These schools typically have high retention rates and low rates of students returning to substance use.

Additionally, SAMHSA's Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) advances effective recovery supports and services for people with mental or substance use disorders and their families.

Find more Publications and Resources on Recovery and Recovery Support.

Help groups for those who have lost loved ones: you are not alone

Image from musikcity.co

The members of the group learned about the new format of helping people who have experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one from social networks and announcements on the Project website.

On February 16 they saw each other for the first time; despite the stereotypes that men are less likely to seek psychological help, there were as many of them in the group as women.

Co-Action psychologists conduct meetings Yana Zakharopulo and Valentina Petrova . With all participants, the hosts conduct small preliminary interviews.

What are support groups for?

A person who has lost a loved one may experience conflicting feelings: on the one hand, he wants to “tell everything”, on the other hand, he is afraid of being misunderstood. For friends, this can be a test, because it is impossible to understand grief if there is no personal experience.

Therefore, a person experiencing the loss of a loved one often finds himself in isolation, and it is not always he who initiated the break with friends. The people around are simply unable to predict his reaction to their help: is it necessary to constantly sympathize, is it worth remembering the deceased, is it possible to advise distraction, is it appropriate to give advice at all? Why did I say: “I understand you” out of good intentions, but they were offended by me: “You don’t understand!”? What is worse: to invite a grieving person to a holiday, or to invite everyone except him?

It seems to a person experiencing grief that it is impossible to find words to express it, so he decides not to say anything, stops calling, writing, meeting.

A group of help for people who have lost loved ones was created in order to overcome the isolation that such a person involuntarily falls into.

Nobody theorizes in the help group, only those who know what the death of a loved one is.

Be silent among your own

Everything happens like in the movies: people enter the room, sit in a circle, introduce themselves and start talking about their feelings, about the situation they are in.

- In a support group, and we are engaged in support, not therapy, we give a person free space to express themselves and protect them from any condemnation, no matter how the interlocutors react to it, - says Yana Zakharopulo, psychologist at Co-Action . - He can cry, swear, get angry, all this is normal. But if someone himself is not ready to talk about his experiences, then our task is to understand why it is difficult for a person to open up and how we can help.

Sometimes a person just needs time to be present, to listen to other participants, to be silent and gather his thoughts. Please, here no one will rush and push until the person himself decides to speak out. If he already wants to say something, but cannot find the words, he is shy, it seems to him that his speech is incomprehensible - for such cases, there are certain psychological techniques that help to cope with the problem.

Photo courtesy of tmgonlinemedia.nl

Knowing yourself is knowing others

Group psychotherapy has long established itself in helping people going through tragic events. Strange as it may seem at first glance, but it is in a group, and not tete-a-tete, that it becomes easier for many to overcome internal barriers that prevent them from talking about their feelings. Over time, tension, fear of being misunderstood, alertness in a person give way to confidence that they will understand him, they will not condemn him, that his experiences are valuable.

This happens because working in a group gives you the opportunity to look at yourself from the outside, even from different angles, to be in the place of another.

For example, listening to a classmate’s story about how his friend was offended when, in response to the advice “not to worry”, “get distracted”, he said something sharp to him, the person notices: “I would also be offended if it were so responded to my advice. And, at the same time, he can understand at this moment that when he himself does this under the influence of emotions, it is insulting to his friends, who did not want to upset him at all.

Such examples, which help to see oneself in three dimensions, to "lose one's temper" and see the reaction to one's words, the behavior of one's friends, help to establish relationships with friends and relatives outside the group.

But the most important feeling that a group gives a person is that you are not alone, there are people around you who are also trying to survive the loss, they understand how bad it can be, why you don’t want to live, get out of bed, go to the store, they don’t need to explain why you didn't wash your face today. And it is no less important that in such groups a person understands that he himself can help others.

In addition to communication, which in itself heals, the group also uses art therapy of the participants' choice. Drawing, music, breathing techniques, body-oriented therapy - different techniques can be practiced at meetings, the main thing is that the participants like it. Do not do what is a burden - one of the basic rules.

Photo from wellmindtherapy.co.uk

New friends

A support group is the same society, only in miniature, and as in ordinary life, relationships will definitely be established between people. Meetings and communication outside the group are only welcome. After all, when both interlocutors experience the loss of a loved one, although each experiences it differently, it is easier for them to agree on how communication will take place without mutual offense: do they want to talk about their pain, share memories, or, conversely, do they want to be distracted and just take a walk together , discuss books, go to the store, argue on abstract topics.

In addition, if a group member needs urgent help or just wants to talk, they can call the 24-hour hotline.

How to evaluate the result

Working with a group is quite hard work for leaders. Unlike face-to-face conversations, when you can completely focus on the interlocutor and “catch” his verbal and non-verbal manifestations, it is difficult to track individual reactions in a group. Therefore, as a rule, two psychologists are present at the meeting at once: one talks with the participants, is involved in the discussion, and the second observes whether it is necessary for someone to pay special attention now, or, on the contrary, whether someone has fallen out of the conversation, lost interest in what is happening. During the two hours that the meeting lasts, everyone who comes should have the opportunity to speak.

- When you see the result: people can live with their loss, they understand that mourning is a very long process and they will have to go through this path, but no one has to go alone - this is very motivating for a psychologist and saves from any burnout, despite the objective complexity of such work, - notes Yana. - It is an honor for me that a person agrees to share deep personal experiences with me, this is a very big trust placed in me - permission to be near. And a very big responsibility, of course.

The specifics of working with people who have lost loved ones is that it is impossible to work with the problem and close it once and for all.

The loss is irreversible and one cannot forget the departed, stop loving him, miss him, but you can adapt to the situation, accept it and move on.

For us, the ideal completion of work with a person is when his emotions become bearable, when he can again lead a normal life: work, communicate with people, relax.

Join group you can call: 8-800-100-01-91 . Meetings are held every Wednesday at 6:30 pm. Participation is free.

German experience - Pro Palliative

Contents

What is mourning?

Lock time

Janus time

Labyrinth phase

Rainbow phase

Recall the situation when someone close to your friend, acquaintance or colleague died. Who among us has not been confused? How to comfort? The phrase "Hold on!", help in organizing the funeral, money? And then what? Distract? Leave alone?

The grief of losing a loved one is constantly experienced by palliative care professionals and ordinary people. To support a relative of a deceased patient, you need to know how to do it correctly. We offer you to get acquainted with the practice of such support, which is used in the German "Long-term Care Center Ludwig-Steil-Hoff". This was told at the Summit of Nurses in Moscow by Katya Petker, a senior nurse, head of one of the Center's hospitals.

In Germany, each clinic has the right to freely choose the concept of mourning, or the concept of bereavement, according to which it will work with relatives, accompany them after the death of a loved one. There are several of these concepts, and there is no “obligation” which one to follow.

After our patient dies - it doesn't matter if he was in our hospital or was at home and we observed him - we do not leave his relatives, we do not leave them alone in trouble, but we try to accompany them. And for the past five years we have been working in accordance with the concept of experiencing loss according to Schmieding (the creator of the model is Ruthmaraika Schmieding, a German teacher: having lost a person close to her, she began to study the processes that happen to people during this period), which describes what a person experiences at every stage of his mourning.

What is mourning?

People cannot stand the pain of others About what can be done for a person who has lost a loved one. Personal experience.

Mourning is an external form of expression of sadness or grief due to the loss of a loved one. This concept is also used when it comes to the death of a public figure, a major statesman, the tragic death of a large number of people. But, of course, we most acutely experience the death of a loved one.

I would like to introduce you to the mourning model for Schmieding. Why is it so important to know her? This knowledge will help both the relatives of the deceased and the staff of the medical institution.

Without knowing anything about the stages of mourning, about how a person reacts to loss and what phases he goes through in his grief, sometimes you might think that he is pretending that his reactions are feigned.

It can be difficult to understand what is happening to him, where he has certain emotional manifestations, and how to help him. And this model just gives an understanding of how a person experiences his loss. This helps to support a suffering relative so that he can get back on his feet and move on in life. The ultimate goal of this model is to help the relative find resources and opportunities that will give him the strength to live on after the loss.

“Hold on”, “I understand you”, “The time has come” – how not to comfort Crisis psychologist, psychologist at the Children’s Hospice “House with a Lighthouse” Larisa Pyzhyanova – about typical phrases of consolation and about what is really behind they cost

This model considers not only the emotional side of experiencing the death of a loved one. Mourning affects all areas of life - on the psyche, on spiritual aspects, on consciousness, cognitive functions, on the social side, so we consider a person in the complex of his manifestations.

Looking at mourning in general, there are four phases of pain:

“Time of locks”;
Janus Time;
Maze Time;
Rainbow Time.

The difficulty lies in the fact that mourning, mourning is not a linear process: these phases can be repeated, returned, and many times. You have probably heard about the stages of accepting death according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross? She distinguishes five phases: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These stages are intertwined, can alternate, repeat, which is why it is so difficult to be close to a worried person: today he is calm, peaceful, tomorrow he again rushes about, gets angry, the day after tomorrow he has depression, apathy.

It's the same here: all these stages are shifting, so it can be very difficult to understand a person who is in mourning, in mourning, it is very difficult to support and accompany him.

Lock time

This is the shortest of the four periods, it lasts from the death of a loved one until his funeral. And this is the only phase of the four that does not repeat, so it is very important to take into account the cultural and religious needs of a person at this moment.

Of course, a lot depends on whether the death was sudden, say, as a result of an accident, or expected, after a long illness. Naturally, sudden death is much more difficult, more painful, and the process of mourning is delayed.

In general, this phase can be characterized by the following metaphor: the ship needs to be controlled, and a “gateway guard” is needed, who opens the lock so that the ship moves from one basin to another, that is, ensures the transition from one state to another. Otherwise, grief can overflow.

I imagine this situation as follows: a person died, and while he was ill, he was lying in our institution, he was the captain of the ship. This person is gone, which means that now someone else must become the captain of this ship, and this other must lead the ship until the funeral takes place. What does it mean? First of all, he must be a Man with a capital letter: be able to listen, keep silent where necessary, support, come, shake hands, just sit next to him. Such actions alleviate grief, partially relieve its emotional severity.

Of course, the maintainer needs to be attentive and infinitely patient in order to be able to listen to the same stories over and over again. Each of us, I'm sure who went through this phase, noticed that a person who has lost a loved one is able to tell the same story ten times, connected with the deceased, constantly returning to it. In the end, the listener begins to think: “Yes, I don’t want to listen to this for the eleventh time!”.

To be heard - for the tenth, and the eleventh, and the one hundred and eleventh time - is very important for a person in mourning! Thus, he, as it were, processes his grief, looking for the next step in order to move on in life.

How to help a grieving child How a child perceives death and experiences grief at different ages, why it is important to take children to funerals, and why the phrases “poor thing, you are the only one left” or “now you are the head of the house” are dangerous

This is especially characteristic of the "gateway" period.

At this moment it is necessary to extend a hand to the mourner: visit him, listen to him, help organize a worthy funeral and commemoration. It is necessary to try to protect the sufferer during this period from some stumbling blocks, additional experiences that exacerbate suffering. A person experiencing a loss often experiences a feeling of guilt, a feeling that he didn’t do something, didn’t finish something: “If I were there then ...”, “If we organized the funeral like this ...”, - such experiences place an additional burden on the shoulders of a person in mourning, and he carries this burden further. Therefore, it is very important that everything that can be done is done to remove this burden from the shoulders of a person: you need to talk to him, support him, listen, help with the funeral, help in solving emerging problems. It is important that at this time of grief, other individual paths open up before the person so that the person takes the next step.

Janus time

The second phase of mourning is Janus time . Why Janus? This is the two-faced god of time in ancient Greek mythology: one face is young, the other is the face of an old man. A person in this phase also has “two faces”: one is the one that he shows to others, to society, the second he hides, hiding what is really happening to him (for example, he comes home and cries into the pillow for a long time, or he fancies , as if he hears the voice of the deceased, but he is afraid to tell someone about it, so that he would not be considered crazy).

Photo: Sydney Sims / Unsplash

And in this phase, a lot depends on whether the person died suddenly, or his death was expected. If this happened suddenly, then, if possible, it is not necessary to talk about the deceased with a relative, during this period such conversations will be an additional burden, stress, and heaviness for him. The time will come, and the mourner himself will ripen for such conversations. As long as he himself does not talk about the deceased, do not provoke him to such conversations. You just need to be there, to accompany, to listen, but not to speak. And if death was expected, here, on the contrary, it is very important to talk with relatives in this phase: discuss the funeral, talk about how the deceased lived, about everything connected with him. Each such conversation brings relief, strengthens a person and gives him the resources to take the next step, to find, as I always say, solid ground under his feet and move on in life.

Society's attitude towards death. From the book “In the middle of life” Why, despite the inevitability of death, we try not to talk about it, and how this “conspiracy of silence” affects children who have lost loved ones

Here is the funeral behind: what happens next with people who experience the death of a loved one ? In the process of mourning, they begin to pay attention to dates, correlate certain days with events that took place near the deceased: they follow the calendar, remember when this person was born, at what time he got to the hospital, etc. That is, they seem to relive everything that happened again.

Bereavement often has sleep disturbances—we all know that. This is a time of tears and doubts. The man has already spent a lot of energy on the funeral, and he understands that he has a hard way ahead. He loses his appetite, he does not sleep, he may have a feeling that he is going crazy.

In 2005 my mother died. At that time, there was no such program for accompanying relatives. And after her death, after the funeral, one day I came home from work, crossed the threshold of the house and heard my mother say to me in German: “Katya, is that you?”. I answered: “Yes”, but I knew that my mother was no more.

I was frightened then, I thought: “That's it, I'm going crazy”. But when I began to discuss this episode with my colleagues, it turned out that this is quite a normal phenomenon during a period when a person is in this phase of mourning: changes occur in his body, there is a feeling that time has stopped. These are all normal reactions of a grieving person. A loved one is no more, but for those who mourn, he is there. Many feel the familiar smell of the departed, hear his voice, feel his touch.

Often people continue to observe all the usual family rituals, as before, when a loved one was alive - they set the table, cook food for the same number of family members as before. They, as if by inertia, still live with a deceased loved one. All these actions are reflected in the change of phases of mourning, this is part of the process, and in any case a person must be supported. Grieving people are often afraid to tell someone about what they are experiencing, but it is very important for them to speak out! Therefore, we create groups of mourning, mourning: once a month or every few months we invite relatives who have lost their loved ones to a meeting so that they can talk and get support. And if it is clear that a person has a need for psychiatric help - he has depression, suicidal thoughts - we offer help to such a relative.

Labyrinth phase

If the feeling of guilt tears the heart apart In all the languages of the universe, so different, we are connected by one dialect - the one that sounds in our hearts as the voice of pain. When we lose loved ones...

This is the very core of mourning, when grief is processed. In principle, this stage can be represented as follows: mourning is a backpack, it is a burden on the shoulders. And with this burden, a person enters the labyrinth, steps forward along it, stumbles, wanders, returns back to the old place. He is looking for a way out, trying to get out of this phase! In the end, there is a way out, and we all know it. A person will come out of this labyrinth - and the backpack will be with him, yes, but - it is no longer as heavy as at the beginning. The one experiencing the loss has already understood, accepted that the deceased is not next to him, he understood that his life goes on, and the departed remains in his heart. By the end of this period, a person is fully aware of the reality of the loss and, with the awareness of this loss, moves on in life.

To talk or not to talk to him during this period? Here everything is individual. Regardless of the phase, if a person accepts your help, is open to conversations, you need to support them - remember the deceased, be there. But if the mourner declines your help, you need to step aside and just watch. And be ready to help, listen when needed.

Rainbow phase

The last step is rainbow phase . Having survived, processed grief, a person moves on in life and again finds the opportunity to rejoice. This is the end of the time of sorrow, life goes on as usual, but no one is forgotten. The deceased becomes part of the new life.

But even at this stage it is possible to return back to the previous phase. Those who accompanied the mourners know that today they can laugh, and tomorrow they can cry inconsolably.