A Student Social Worker's Reflection of the Self and Professional Identity Following the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans

Abstract

This paper examines the professional identity development of a graduate social work student who was on the verge of completing her degree from Tulane University just as Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The author discusses how being a victim of the same trauma from which her clients are suffering, as well as experiencing the same emotional impact, affects the development of her role as a social worker. The author draws comparisons to social work students experiencing the terror of the second intifada as they too developed their own senses of professional identity and how their experiences affected the meaning of their profession. The author reflects on her struggle to recapture a sense of personal self once everything she knows is gone, in order to determine under which role she serves her clients as they suffer from the same loss.

Keywords

student professional identity development trauma

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Baum, N. (2004). Social work students cope with terror. Clinical Social Work Journal, 32, 395-413.

Bragg, R. (2005, September 2). This isn't the last dance. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101813.html .

Colarossi, L. , Heyman, J. , & Phillips, M. (2005). Social workers' experiences of the world trade center disaster: Stressors and their relationship to symptom types. Community Mental Health Journal, 41, 185-198.

Drury, J. , & Winter, G. (2003). Social identity as a source of strength in mass emergencies and other crowd events. International Journal of Mental Health, 32, 77-93.

Frankl, V. (1959). Man's search for meaning. New York: Touchstone.

Geller, J. , Madsen, L. , & Ohrenstein, L. (2004). Secondary trauma: A team approach. Clinical Social Work Journal, 32, 415-430.

Gotham, K. (2007). Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, culture, and race in the Big Easy. New York: NYU Press .

Miehls, D. (2001). The interface of racial identity development with identity complexity in clinical social work student practitioners. Clinical Social Work Journal, 29, 229-244.

10.

Miehls, D. , & Moffatt, K. (2000). Constructing social work identity based on the reflexive self. British Journal of Social Work, 3, 339-348.

11.

Palm, K. , Polusny, M. , & Follette, V. (2004). Vicarious traumatization: Potential hazards and interventions for disaster and trauma workers. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 19, 73-78.

12.

Puddifoot, J. (1996). Some initial considerations in the measurement of community identity. Journal of Community Psychology, 24, 327-336.