Clinical Social Work with Military Service Members and Veterans

Catalog description

This elective course is intended to provide social work graduate students with specialized knowledge to deliver informed, culturally competent, and ethical clinical social work services to current U.S. military service members and Veterans. This course will help student intervene to meet the mental health and psychosocial needs of this growing population. The course utilizes research data, case examples, and Veteran first-hand accounts such as documentary film and fiction, to illustrate the range of experiences and psychosocial reactions to war-zone deployment, homecoming, and military sexual trauma. Emphasis is given primarily to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, but the course also attends to diverse populations and Veterans from other war eras and peacetime. Focus is paid to the role military culture can play as protective and risk factors, and to the clinical implications of service members’ concerns about stigma. The course highlights ethics and ethical dilemmas of providing social work within the military sector.