A focus on solutions: the appropriate coping response to suffering and pain.

The study explored ways that therapeutic work can be done with bereaved families in the Zimbabwean, African cultural context. The study used stories that families provided about their losses. These narratives were explored as ways to inform therapeutic practice. Findings were that a focus on solutions is valuable as an adaptive intervention and might prove to be one of the most effective means by which a number of people in Zimbabwe learn to cope with grief and adapt after the death of loved ones.