ABSTRACT
People from other cultures may need our help because: they are isolated or reject their parent culture; have physical symptoms that may have psychosomatic origins; or face losses that may give rise to mental disorders. Psychodynamic psychotherapies, cognitive therapy, family therapy and other 'treatments' should be reserved for the minority of bereaved people who suffer manifest psychiatric illness following bereavement. Poverty and lack of medical care along with high rates of deaths by violence and accident, give rise to large numbers of untimely, traumatic and 'unnatural' deaths. Caregivers should be encouraged to offer spiritual care to dying patients and their families as needed. One group who have paid special attention to this issue is the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement (IWG). This body of international experts from many different disciplines had produced a series of Statements on Death, Dying and Bereavement which include the deliberations of a work group on Spiritual Care.
