| Author: | Hung, King Lun Alan |
| Title: | A study of the grief experiences and recovery of social workers in the mental health setting |
| Advisors: | Ku, Hok Bun (APSS) Leung, Sze Ming (APSS) |
| Degree: | DSW |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Subject: | Social workers -- Psychology Social workers -- Mental health Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Applied Social Sciences |
| Pages: | ix, 365 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | This research explored the grief emotions of social workers who experienced the death of clients in community mental health settings. Ten informants were classified into three categories, namely social work administrators, senior social workers (sub-team leaders or clinical leaders) and novices or frontline social workers. Each group with three members or above were recruited for this study. The study's design adopted the phenomenological research method through qualitative inquiry and semi-structured interviews, which were conducted to explore the grief actions among participants. The researcher found that these social workers became wounded helpers and also faced a series of grief emotions even though they were regarded as professional social workers. All informants were found to suffer from grief emotions after experiencing the suicide of their clients. In the findings, some informants had concealed their grief emotions and did not know how to deal with them after their clients committed suicide. They would encounter 13 forms of grief experiences including self-blame, anger, loss, panic, shock, regret, guilt, flashback, shame, fear, sadness, helplessness, and anxiety. Each of their experiences evoked psychological pain and it took a long time with tears to overcome the professional tragedy. However, the researcher discovered that their griefs and sufferings were strongly connected to their perceived professional self-identity which constituted their perception of professionalism. It was also found that the informants could benefit from useful support from within to cope with the challenges after experiencing the suicide of their clients. There were mainly two ways to cope with these tragedy events from within, including religion and self-coping strategies. On the other hand, the findings of this study revealed that support from peers, family and organizations were regarded as an external resource that could help them to work through their grief emotions. At the same time, the findings also indicated that the informants had learned a lesson from their grief experiences such as the importance of empathy, adjustment of expectations, early intervention, and human-based management. Undoubtedly, this study is a pioneer project in exploring the subjective experiences of social workers in coping with the suicidal death of clients in the local context. Last but not least, the "Five-Level-Strategies" was recommended for the social work field to enhance social worker's own mental health awareness as well as their recovery from traumatic situations in their career. They are personal, professional, colleague, organization and college level. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6368.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 2.23 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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