On the decolonization of bereavement theory, research, and practice
(2026) 17th Conference of the World Association for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling (PCE World conference) — Location: Cologne, Germany (6.July.2026)
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- Abstract
- Motivation: Over the last century, bereavement, grief processes and interventions have increasingly been conceived within the epistemology of Evidence-Based Medicine. This has led many to conclude that pathological grief exists and requires to be “treated”. There are, however, divergent voices, including myself, that have challenged these conceptions and raised interrelated epistemological, methodological, ethical, and clinical practice concerns. Problem: These voices can be grouped into two main categories. The first remains within a positivist framework but seeks to correct false assumptions about bereavement that persist in science, practice, and popular discourse. The second calls for a paradigmatic shift in the conception of bereavement science, rooted in social constructivist or postmodern perspectives since bereavement and grief are shaped by the historical, epistemological, and socio-cultural contexts that influence theorists, researchers, practitioners and lay (and bereaved) people alike. Methodology: As a first step to decolonizing bereavement studies, together with international colleagues, I call for the systematic investigation of the effects of sampling and recruitment strategies on the (non)representativity of bereaved samples and how they perpetuate biased outcomes that may disenfranchise and pathologize grief reactions. Several systematic reviews (scoping and meta-method) are currently performed. Results: Preliminary results of these reviews will be presented, illustrating how sampling biases –although sometimes acknowledged--, remain under-reported and under-investigated, and at times even misreported in this field. Results will also examine how bereavement research procedures shape who is studied (overwhelmingly WEIRD female), how they are recruited (mainly through non-random or self-selected sampling), and what conclusions are subsequently drawn (with a concentration on “symptoms” of grief and the reinforcement of partial narratives implying the medicalization and psychologization of bereavement and grief). Discussion: We will discuss whether bereavement knowledge has largely been constructed within a single dominant paradigm that produced biased or incomplete findings. Future lines of research will be proposed.
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Citations
Zech, E. (2026). On the decolonization of bereavement theory, research, and practice. In Till Schultze-Gebhardt & Meike Braun (ed.), PCE26 A changing world: what it does with us and what we do with it: Book of programme and abstracts (pp. 148-149). PCE World. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280129