Art Therapy and pet bereavement curriculum

The effects of unresolved grief or bereavement can cause a continuous disruption in a person’s mood and daily life, ranging from difficulty or inability to work, attend social, or romantic life. The death of a pet can be equally detrimental depending on the suddenness and closeness of the loss and when unrecognized by others can lead to disenfranchised grief (Eckerd et. al, 2016; Robinson & Smith, 2022). While treatments for bereavement and processing the death of a loved one for individualized or group settings are present in the counseling setting, little lies in processing pet-specific loss. Art therapy can provide a variety of art directives to allow clients to express their thoughts, feelings, and loss nonverbally through the art and verbally through discussion of the art. An eight-week curriculum for group art therapy is then proposed, after describing terms and reviewing journal articles and books relating to bereavement and pet specific loss.