OHIO — How people process grief can vary from person to person.
What You Need To Know
- Help Texts provides ongoing grief support after a death
- Messages around death from addiction, drug and alcohol use were created first, with text messages following in the pilot program
- 95% of people who received ongoing, personalize support through texts found it helpful in their grief
- To learn more, click here
While it can be tough after a loved one has been in hospice care, those in the health care field have worked over the last years to create a new program.
It’s a program that’s another layer of support, which helps people to cope. Emma Payne, CEO of Help Texts, came up with the idea and collaborated with Hospice of the Western Reserve in Cleveland to jump start the program. The facility was the first in the country to take part.
As a result of the program, “95% of the people that get expert, on going, personalized support straight to their phones say that they find it helpful in their grief," Payne said.
Those who participated in the pilot received messages for one year. Doing so made them feel less alone. That’s in addition to getting other resources that include tips and suggestions to deal with grief.
Payne added that they started to see “a reduction in all kinds of negative health outcomes that are commonly associated with bereavement things like anxiety, depression, substance use, illness and so on.”
Now that they’ve been able to get positive results from the program, it’s been expanded to help support health care workers struggling with fatigue and burnout. That program is based on the health care worker’s particular setting and role. Help Texts for caregivers caring for someone with a terminal diagnosis has been launched as well
Payne explained that those messages help people when they find out their loved one is going to die. In this instance, caregivers are being educated so they know what to expect. They are then provided with additional support after their loved one dies.