Sari Lindeman is a doctorate student at The Tavistock and Portman NHS and an assistant professor at Western Norway University, Bergen, Norway. She is also the academic coordinator for Family Therapy education in Bergen.
She has twenty years of experience from family and couples therapy and substance abuse services. In addition to systemic family therapy, Sari has education in narrative therapy, mentalization-based therapies, Gottman couples therapy and in complex trauma disorders.
Sari is published several book chapters and articles, and she is widely used as supervisor for students and organizations in social work, substance abuse, mental healthcare and family therapy.

In this Subplenarie, I wish to present therapeutic encounters with families and couples who are experiencing drug death bereavement.

The Norwegian research project Drug death related bereavement and recovery (The END-project) was launched in 2017. The aim of the project is to fill a huge gap in knowledge, and strengthen support for the large group of people in our society that are supposed to go on living after the loss of a person that were close to them in drug related deaths (DRDs).

An important part of the project is to improve the life situation of a marginalized group in society, and part of this work is to develop better services to this underserved grieving population. It means also that we need to increase the competence of professionals in this field.

This Subplenarie seeks to further understand how systemic practitioners and family therapists can help and support these families. As Family Therapist, we need to develop more insight into how these themes can be covered in therapeutic conversations with bereaved families and couples.