BY: ROI LOMOTAN
DUMAGUETE CITY, May 6 (PIA) – The Erwin P. Cabanag Adult Leukemia Memorial (EPCALM) Foundation of the Philippines is inviting the public to attend its grief management conference on May 9 to 10 at the Silliman Hall, Dumaguete City.
The conference entitled, “Understanding Grief 2: The Healing Journey” aims to deepen people’s understanding on the grief process and how to deal with it.
The event is part of EPCALM’s commitment in providing emotional support to families of adult leukemia victims and also to those who experienced loss and grief due to various other reasons like the natural calamities that devastated parts of Central Visayas last year.
EPCALM recognizes the impact of the grief and stress families have to go through due to loss or separation regardless if it is caused leukemia or other reasons.
This is the reason why EPCALM organized a conference that focuses on grief management.
“It is actually for every lay man. All of us has what you call grief bundle and there are ways to manage this, if we could only understand it. Even for lay persons this seminar is very helpful,” said Atty. Riodil Montebon, EPCALM Director said in a press conference recently.
The conference features Mary Ellen Rickson, co-founder and director of Grief Works USA, who would give lectures on understanding grief and ways of overcoming it.
“Part of what will happen in the seminar is we will gain understanding in the process of grief itself and then obtain tools and strategies for working through it,” Rickson said.
There will also be a segment on critical incidence stress debriefing included in the seminar.
Aside from Rickson, local celebrities Boy Abunda and Martin Nieverra will also be in the conference to share how they coped with grief and loss.
Meanwhile, Silliman University President Ben Malayang said the grief management conference can help the university develop a course that deals with understanding grief and death.
Malayang disclosed that so far, learning institutions in the country do not have courses that deal with understanding grief and death and “yet that is something that happens to us.”
“There is, I think, an urgency to see to it that institutions of education such as Silliman will be able to shape up a knowledge experience for infusing into the total education of people the need to understand and being able to understand grief, death, dying and loss of loved ones,” Malayang said.
Malayang further said that the university is open to the possibility of doing a study on grief and dying based on the conference and develop it as a potential course.
He explained that field itself inter-disciplinary since it encompasses psychology, medicine, sociology and anthropology.
“We would like to set that up as potential university course in itself,” he added.
The grief management conference has modules for health care providers, social workers, counselors, and church and development workers and non-government organizations but EPCALM extended its invitation to those who were affected by the recent calamities that devastated provinces in Central Visayas. (rmn/RAL/PIA7-NEGOR)