ABSTRACT
Helping professions are intimately connected to the values and structure of the social context in which they exist. Professions are socially determined and sanctioned with regard to their objectives. Social trends and public opinion shape their focus. Helping professions will play an ever increasing part in the care and management of unending grief. With ongoing events pointing to the need for significantly more helping professionals, professions need to be responsive to attitudes and needs and to be sensitive to change, anticipate it, and in a timely manner identify and replace outmoded procedures, practices, and theories. At the time the medical profession was becoming involved in their care and treatment, those who chose to specialize in what we now refer to as "psychiatry" were identified as "alienists," reflective of social opinions and views of "otherness." Helping professions of the future will face rapid shifts and expansions of technological innovations with concomitant positive and negative spinoffs.
