Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Nov 22/99) - A third new healing program is in the works at the Baffin Correctional Centre.

This latest one, which began last Thursday afternoon, promises to be equally as effective as the sexual offenders treatment program and the alternatives-to-violence program, said Wayne Podmoroff, the psychologist on staff at the centre.

"When we speak of loss and bereavement and trauma, we're not just speaking of death, but of things that are taken away from us as human beings. It's a matter of regaining it," said Podmoroff.

Initiated first in the more conventional one-on-one grief counselling sessions, Podmoroff said that through his work at BCC, he recognized the very real need and benefit of hosting a similar program in the group therapy format.

To that end, he developed a program to allow interested inmates to gather for 90 minutes on Thursday afternoons to talk specifically as men about regaining themselves following their grief and loss.

Podmoroff said the first step was to recognize the methods the men had developed on their own to deal with bereavement. To date, he said, three very clear styles had emerged.

"There are those who deny the loss and pretend nothing has happened. We also talk about the disturbed personality which is fixed on its own emotional upheaval and the third one becomes depressed, withdrawn and asocial."

Once the participants become aware of their grieving styles, they look at the different phases of loss and how they move through them as men. They then turn their attention to the positive steps they can take to turn their grief around and use it to grow.

Podmoroff also noted that emphasis was placed on teaching the inmates about their own emotions so they would come to recognize and be familiar with them. This would lead to the understanding that grief and loss were very real and normal aspects of life, he said

"Rather than looking at grief as dysfunctional and pathological, we look at it as a normal process of human evolution. Once we put things into that context and give individuals that understanding, it makes sense to them."

He added, however, that given the violent colonization of Inuit and the other abuses that have been handed down, it was likely that many of the men in the program had suffered more grief and loss than members of other societies.

That belief and the appropriate steps to healing have been incorporated into the newest program.

"It's important to give people some form of hope."