Psychosocial Intervention on the Dual-Process Model for a Group of COVID-19 Bereaved Individuals in Wuhan: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Wuhan was the first large city where the initial breakout of COVID-19 took numerous lives. A group of social workers and mental health specialists coordinated the “Be Together Program” (BTP), a psychosocial grief intervention program to help a group of Wuhan COVID-19 bereaved people. Under the Dual-process model framework, BTP used the internet and social media as the main tools, combined with group and individual intervention. Additionally, it employed a “Supermarket Mode” with abundant intervention themes and approaches for BTP participants to choose according to their special needs. Additionally, Chinese cultural elements are integrated into the program. At the end of the program, the grief scores of participants in the qualified sample reduced significantly, and the prevalence of the potential Prolonged Grief Disorder diagnosis reduced from 75% to 12%. The study also found that the BTP was especially effective for those who had high levels of grief reaction.

Healing grief – an online self-help intervention programme for bereaved Chinese with prolonged grief: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

“…This intervention is designed based on the DPM proposed by Dutch psychologists Stroebe and Schut ( 1999 ). The interventions based on DPM have been validated to be suitable for Chinese people (Chen et al, 2019 ; Chow et al, 2019 ; Yu et al, 2022 ). The DCM emphasises the oscillation between loss-oriented coping such as yearning for the deceased and restoration-oriented coping such as attending to life change.…”

“…When used in intervention protocols, DPM-based face-to-face group intervention was more effective than the control group that only focused on loss-oriented coping in improving complicated grief, depression, and social support among older adults who have been widowed for more than 2 years in Hong Kong (Chow et al, 2019 ). Developed under the DPM framework, a remote intervention combining group therapy and individual therapy, delivered through webinars, improved grief symptoms among people bereaved due to COVID-19 in Wuhan, China (Yu et al, 2022 ). Since DPM has been verified to be suitable for Chinese people from the perspectives of theory and practice, we chose DPM as our theoretical ground when designing the Internet-based grief intervention protocol.…”

Ethical Challenges Involved in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates for Children: A Systematic Review

“…The first case of COVID-19 was reported in late December 2019 [ 1 ] in Wuhan, China [ 2 ]. Soon after, it became a global pandemic with 290,000,000 confirmed cases and 5,446,753 deaths over the past two years all over the world [ 3 ].…”

An 8-week community-based resilience group intervention for Chinese parents who lost their only child: A two-armed pragmatic waitlist-control trial.

“…To the best of our knowledge, only four relevant studies have been conducted: a theory-driven group bereavement intervention for widowed older adults living in the community in Hong Kong (Chow et al, 2019), a resilience song-writing program for adolescents in the community-based setting (Myers-Coffman et al, 2020), a bereavement support group for female adolescents from a local nonprofit organization in South Africa (Thurman et al, 2017), and a social media-based psychosocial intervention for individuals bereaved due to COVID-19 in China (Z. Yu et al, 2022). These community-based participatory interventions were group-based and highly culturally sensitive and featured localized resources.…”

“…For those experiencing a psychological crisis, implementing group-based support in the local community is more readily accepted than providing such support in a hospital or care context (Sim & Wang, 2021); this is especially relevant for parents who have lost their only child because they strongly desire a sense of belonging with their peers and prefer not to be treated as a “psychiatric patient” (Wang et al, 2024). To the best of our knowledge, only four relevant studies have been conducted: a theory-driven group bereavement intervention for widowed older adults living in the community in Hong Kong (Chow et al, 2019), a resilience song-writing program for adolescents in the community-based setting (Myers-Coffman et al, 2020), a bereavement support group for female adolescents from a local nonprofit organization in South Africa (Thurman et al, 2017), and a social media-based psychosocial intervention for individuals bereaved due to COVID-19 in China (Z. Yu et al, 2022).…”