Category: Social Justice, Mental Health, Welfare and Public Benefits Category: Social Justice, Mental Health, Welfare and Public Benefits (show less) Other: Wisconsin Other: Wisconsin (show less)

The psychologically taxing circumstances associated with economic distress can have a major impact on the individual and family and can lead to significant psychological challenges from externalizing to internalizing personal problems and the expression of depressive symptoms and hostility toward others. As such, economic distress and despair as a traumatic experience must be considered as a complex trauma that can cause alterations in relationships and in an individual’s sense of self and can affect personal relationships with others.

The psychological pain associated with economic distress can be experienced as unbearable, capturing the individual’s ability to communicate the depth of their suffering. The challenges of economic distress and the harsh conditions associated with this strained level of deprivation has the capacity to have powerful effects on mental health, psychosocial functioning, and well-being. Understanding of the traumatizing effects must be better understood and become a focus of clinical practice intervention with clients who are victim to this duress. Clinical social workers must incorporate in their clinical understanding of the client or clients their narrative of their experience.

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will develop an understanding of the impact of economic despair/poverty on the individual.
2. Participants will apply to their case conceptualizations of the impact of intersectionality of Economic despair and the individual's environment.
3. Participants will enhance their understanding of how these impactful present in clinical practice.