Mr. Odhrán Allen:

I would echo what others have said before me. To elaborate, in the area of bereavement counselling, I touched on the area of disenfranchised grief. For lesbian and gay people, that is definitely a feature that comes up in bereavement counselling. That can complicate the grief of gay and lesbian people when their grief is not seen as the same as the grief of a man who is married to a woman or vice versa. That is something of which bereavement counsellors need to be aware.

It is useful to also mention the issue of multiple loss and how that can complicate the grief experiences of LGBT people, particularly gay men who would have experienced multiple losses in the 1980s and 1990s resulting from HIV and AIDS. Then, when there can be a later bereavement, that background experience of multiple losses can complicate the grief, particularly of gay men, because they may not have dealt with such multiple losses. The literature would talk about the almost post-traumatic stress disorder like presentation of some gay men when they are bereaved of a partner because of the background experience of multiple losses in the 1980s and 1990s. It is an interesting point.