After losing both of her parents to Covid-19 last year, professional Saloni Jha went through a deep state of prolonged grief. She quit her job and isolated herself from her family members. When everything started to go dark, Saloni found grief therapy. The sudden loss of loved ones in a situation like a pandemic causes us to live in denial. There is guilt, regret, anger and all kinds of emotions playing in the mind that kill us from inside. Grief therapy helps you work toward acceptance. I can say that I am now on a slow road to recovery.
Explaining the need for grief therapy, Dr. Ruchi Mishra, a grief therapist, explains, Many of us are experiencing a wave of loss, and for some, these can accumulate and lead to a serious mental health crisis. Unresolved or unresolved pain can cause heart problems, weakened immunity, sleep problems, and deep depression. Grief therapy helps people acknowledge what happened and work with the emotions, instead of avoiding them,” she said. Remarkable about pandemic grief being difficult 
Speaking about her personal experience, teacher Sujata Srinivas, 34, from Pune said that she received grief counseling for four months. I lost my father during the pandemic and all my family members are dealing with grief in their own ways. Sometimes the pain and suffering can be overwhelming. But proper counseling and regular therapy helped us. The most healing part of grief therapy for me was speaking and crying my heart out to my counselor,” she shares.
Grief counselor and therapist Dr. Priyadarshini Nair fields over 100 calls for grief counseling daily. Awareness of grief therapy in India was low until 2018, she emphasized. A few hospitals have grief counselors, but it’s hard to find mental health professionals who focus on it. But during the pandemic, the need for grief therapy has seen a diverse increase. However, there are only a few thousand grief counselors working for Lakhs of people. It is critical to helping people cope with another ‘epidemic’ – that of grief. Since there are so many grief counselors in the country, psychologist Dr. Anya Kumar shares, grief therapists can also be contacted. Don’t hesitate to seek therapy online.
When social media helps people cope with grief
Social media has played a key role in the second wave of Covid-19, with many people receiving help online. The same goes for helping people cope with grief. Radha Jain, co-founder of a hospitality company in Mumbai, lost her mother recently and she says a lot of people have reached out to her online. Random people on social media have reached out to me to check on my health. Everyone is so supportive and loving. Throughout the grieving process, people helped me cope with the loss, sharing Radha. Similarly, Ali Shaikh from Lucknow found a love and support online when his father passed away. I was really surprised by how many people messaged me, helped with advisor contacts, and listened to me. This has been a healing journey for me. The fact that strangers can support us during difficult times makes us believe in a better world, he shares. How to help a person in grief? Psychologist Poonam Jamwal shares a few tips: -Give the person time to talk about the loss–a good listener and understand that people deal with grief differently. Validate how they feel there because of their current scenario? .
