Date of Award

8-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Social Work

First Advisor

Kathleen Ohman

Keywords

Social work, Mental health, Vicarious trauma, Mental health professionals

Abstract

In the last twenty years, researchers, theorists, and clinicians have begun to identify the personal toll on clinicians who work with traumatized clients. Mental health professionals may experience disruptions in their cognitive schema due to their clinical experiences. Clinicians may also struggle with depression, cynicism, alienation from friends and colleagues and an array of psychological and physical symptoms. While researchers have begun to explore how vicarious trauma manifests with clinical staff, there remains a need to identify interventions that are effective in mitigating vicarious trauma, burnout, and intent to leave.

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the relationship between levels of debriefing interventions and vicarious trauma, burnout, and intent to leave. To that end, a convergent parallel mixed methods design was used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data. The convergent parallel design is a triangulation design where data were collected concurrently using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results of this study addressed whether the debrief intervention is a viable intervention associated with rates of vicarious trauma, intent to leave, and burnout for mental health clinicians who work with children and adolescents with histories of trauma.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Dawn R. Matera

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

177 pgs

Discipline

Social work

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