Working With Adult Homicide Survivors, Part II: Helping Family Members Cope With Murder

TOPIC: The process of coping with the murder of a loved one and ways in which therapists may assist homicide survivors in the aftermath. PURPOSES: To identify coping strategies used by homicide survivors, describe variables that may affect the grieving process, discuss treatment strategies related to posttraumatic stress and complicated mourning within the framework of outcome-oriented nursing process, and explore the concept of posttraumatic growth. SOURCES: Review of the literature and the author's own clinical work. CONCLUSIONS: Coping with the aftermath of murder is a difficult and long-lasting process. While no one method or strategy for assisting homicide survivors works for everyone, a combination of therapeutic approaches-including crisis intervention, individual, family, and group therapy, peer support groups, pharmacological-that may assist the survivor in working through the trauma and grief of such a violent loss.