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Floral tributes are left near Grenfell Tower.
Floral tributes are left near Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Floral tributes are left near Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

‘Nothing is real for them now, it’s hard to help’

This article is more than 6 years old
For survivors and the bereaved, it’s practical support and empathy that are needed now

Timing will be key to helping the many people grieving the loss of relatives and close friends at Grenfell Tower, bereavement counsellors said this weekend.

As the prime minister announced an additional £1.5m yesterday for mental health support for the emergency services and bereavement therapy for the Grenfell Tower families, experts said the kind of help on offer was crucial.

The funding will pay for individual family support from a named mental health practitioner. “The residents of Grenfell Tower, families who have lost loved ones, and the emergency services who have been working so hard to help them, have been through some of the most harrowing and traumatic experiences imaginable,” Theresa May said.

Graeme Orr, a grief counsellor working in Glasgow, said those involved would not yet be ready to be helped by treatment, or even able to ask for help. “Nothing is real for these people at the moment, so it is very difficult to offer them therapy,” he said.

Orr, who has worked with those suddenly bereaved after accidents as well as with traumatised members of the emergency services, suggested that tending to immediate physical needs and offering reassurance should be the top priority for some time. “Psychiatric first aid is really about offering shelter and comfort.”

Jonathan Bisson, a professor of psychiatry at Cardiff University, agreed that research suggested practical help and empathy were more important than counselling in the first days following a catastrophic incident. “All the evidence is quite clear that one-to-one interventions at this stage may not have great value,” said Bisson, who has conducted influential trials in this field. “It is better to monitor those affected to see who may show symptoms of traumatic stress in the next few weeks and then to offer help. I would certainly recommend things are done that way around.”

Orr argued that it would be necessary to keep tabs on survivors’ movements, so they could be offered emotional help later. “We have to approach this carefully. The loss is very sudden, if you compare it with illness. What they have suffered is traumatic and it is easy to re-traumatise people. You might use the model of the idea that someone has been in a whirlpool of feeling and then suddenly drops over the edge of a waterfall to be plunged into a pool of shock. They will have no idea what has happened to them and take a long time to get oriented. They have no touchstones at the moment.”

The importance of waiting until grief counselling is acceptable to survivors was also underlined by Heather Shipley, a cognitive behavioural therapist and therapeutic counsellor working with grief and loss.

“Right now these people just need time,” she said on Saturday. “Counselling can be fantastic. But people need to be in a place where they feel OK about speaking to someone first. When something like this happens it affects people in very different ways. You need to look at the way people want to be helped and to be led by them. They might want face-to-face help later, or counselling in a group with their friends. They are going to experience some very strong emotions eventually, but there will be people who know them in the community who can offer advice as to how bereavement therapy should be offered.”

Shipley, who has often worked with bereaved children, said that the priority for dealing with them was to let them react at their own pace. “Children need to know that they have the right to feel whatever they feel. They may see their relatives upset and not understand at first. They should just know from the beginning that someone will be there for them if they want it.”

Guilt will also be a significant mental burden, according to psychologist and grief therapist Maureen Anderson. “Often in my experience clients carry the guilt and loss of what they might have done, but did not do,” she said.

Anderson, who works in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and has 15 years of NHS experience working with bereavement, said that when the shock and disbelief had passed, violent feelings of blame could take over. Blame either against oneself or others.

“Sometimes you might then feel guilt. You may feel that it was wrong that such a good person died. Sometimes these feelings are turned inwards on to ourselves, and the question may arise, ‘Why was it not me who died?’ These feelings will be exacerbated if you are also a survivor, as well as a bereaved person.”

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