Social Work: A Demanding Career That Addresses Canada's Social Problems - Research Paper

Introduction

Social workers understand the effects that result from published scientific journals can cause on social services. Canada faces various social problems that include child abuse, substance abuse, and family instability (Dassieu et al., 2020). Therefore, social work is critical, and there is a need for training social workers to have the ability to understand and using interventions to different challenges facing Canada. A social work career is very demanding both physically and mentally because of the constantly changing environment within the country. Social workers need to make suitable decisions according to the situation of their clients. This essay will critically provide an appraisal using qualitative methodology in an article about counseling and psychotherapy research.

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Critical Appraisal

In September 2010, Maggie Long and Mary Jenkins researched counselor's perspectives on self-harm and the role of the therapeutic relationship for working with clients who self-harm. The research had clear goals, which included gaining comprehension of a counselor's experiences and opinions concerning self-harm. Also, the researchers had an objective of developing knowledge of the relational depth of counselors while working with individuals who self-harm. The authors provided short and clear statements to state the objective for easy understanding. The researcher used a qualitative methodology to explore the counselor's perceptions of working with persons who self-harm. The authors preferred using a qualitative study because of various reasons. The first reason is the in-depth focus on the subjective experiences of the individuals who self-harm. Secondly, qualitative research offers a strong and coherent voice to persons who harm themselves to manage their existence. At the start, the authors used purposive sampling and then snowballed sampling. The data was collected from experienced counselors, so it provided appropriate results.

Northern Ireland Forum for Counsellors (a voluntary set of counselors who are positioned to support ongoing professional growth) provided the researchers with the participants. The study sampled eight participants through a snowball sampling method. The authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews that lasted for forty-five minutes and analyzed the data using Grounded Theory. The study was approved by BACP, the University's Ethics Committee. The study respected ethical matters like respect for the confidentiality of the participants and the experiences they linked to the topic by using pseudonyms. The participants were offered a consent document, and the interviews took place in an appropriate and safe environment. Additionally, the authors informed the participants about the probability of publishing the study.

Findings and Results

The study seeks to investigate whether personal harm may be more common amongst young people, individuals between 20-30 years, or among the older persons. The results concurred with the findings of Gratz et al. (2002), which states that self-harm is common among men. Nevertheless, they are different from Fox and Hawton (2004), who supported that the perspective that individual harm is usual amongst teenagers. The methods of identifying self-harm behaviors influence the knowledge concerning the people impacted by self-harm.

The study concluded that the types of self-harm include repetitive, personal carelessness, and deliberate. They argued that self-harm offers a feeling of release, liberation, personality, self-control, or exclusion. The counselors stated that self-harm is caused by frustration, substance abuse, depression, rape, domestic violence, and a history of suicide in the victim's family. The participating counselors stated that clients require time to develop trust with the psychotherapist and the therapeutic procedure. The participants acknowledged that even though time is limited, it is essential to provide the self-harm persons with enough time because individuals are continuously in a psychological healing process.

A counselor stated that there is a client who self-harmed his/herself to remove the dirt in her blood. The evidence was supported by findings from other researchers who stated that blood is cultural healing. Blood is damp and warm, and it is referred to as a life-bringing trait; hence some clients consider removing it as a therapy. Additionally, the study results provide the role of the therapeutic connection for people who self-harm. The outcomes confirm that therapeutic association is fundamental for therapists working with self-harming individuals.

According to the participants, it is critical to maintaining their client's confidentiality. This helps to enhance trust and to avoid disappointing the clients after finding the confidence to confront and talk about their problems. A therapeutic connection is vital because it discovers if the counselor is suitable or not. Some of the things that a counselor should note while starting therapy are risk evaluation, client's history, developing contracts, listening, and observing skills. Additionally, the findings indicated that a therapist should be pessimistic, trustworthy, non-judgmental, create a safe surrounding, and allow the client to decide the satisfaction of the therapy (Long & Jenkins, 2010).

Limitations

One of the limitations of the study is the sole attention of the practitioners' experiences. Recommendation for more study would comprise the improvement of qualitative researches from the opinions of the self-harming individuals and therapists. The inclusion of both self-harming people and the counselors would improve study in this field to use results for education, progressive professional growth, and evidence-based practices (Lindgren, Svedin, & Werko, 2018). Researchers should study the self-harming people who hide and are never known. Also, differences in culture, gender, and age of the participating counselors should have yielded different outcomes because self-harm could have established separately in social and therapeutic limits.

References

Dassieu, L., Kabore, J. L., Choiniere, M., Arruda, N., & Roy, E. (2020). Painful lives: Chronic pain experience among people who use illicit drugs in Montreal (Canada). Social Science & Medicine, 246, 112734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112734

Fox, C., & Hawton, K. (2004). Deliberate self-harm in adolescence. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Gratz, K. L., Conrad, S. D., & Roemer, L. (2002). Risk factors for deliberate selfharm among college students. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 72(1), 128-140. https://doi.org/10.1037/0002-9432.72.1.128

Lindgren, B. M., Svedin, C. G., & Werko, S. (2018). A systematic literature review of experiences of professional care and support among people who self-harm. Archives of suicide research, 22(2), 173-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2017.1319309

Long, M., & Jenkins, M. (2010). Counselors' perspectives on self-harm and the role of the therapeutic relationship for working with clients who self-harm. Counseling and Psychotherapy Research, 10(3), 192-200. DOI: 10.1080/14733140903474293