Stress, Trauma, and Decision-Making for Social Workers

Social workers regularly make high-risk, high-impact decisions: determining that a child has been abused; that an individual may take their own life; or that someone with a history of violence poses harm to another. In the course of this work, social workers are exposed to acute and prolonged workplace trauma and stress that may result in posttraumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. These effects not only impact practitioners, but also the decisions that social workers make and ultimately the quality of the services that they provide. In this book, Cheryl Regehr explores the intersection between workplace stress, trauma exposure, and professional decision-making in social workers. She weaves together practice experience, research on the impact of stress and trauma on performance and decision-making in other high-risk professions including paramedics and police officers, and the empirical study of competence and decision-making in social work practice. Covering a wide range of research and theory, she surveys practical approaches to reducing stress and trauma exposure, mitigating their effects in social work practice, and improving decision-making. This book is critical reading for all social workers who engage in high-stakes decision-making, from those newly embarking on a career to expert practitioners.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Stress and Trauma in Social Work 3. Factors Contributing to Trauma Response 4. Factors Contributing to Stress Response 5. Competence and Expertise 6. Decision-Making 7. Stress, Trauma, and Decision-Making 8. Mitigating the Effects of Stress and Trauma on Decision- Making 9. Improving Decision-Making in Situations of Uncertainty References Index

About the Author :
Cheryl Regehr is the vice president and provost of the University of Toronto. Formerly dean of social work, she is a professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, with cross-appointments to the Faculty of Law and the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. She is also a senior fellow of Massey College.

Review :
Regehr is masterful in her ability to synthesize research knowledge and scholarship from social work and related fields and bring the resulting synthesis to the discussion of this complex topic. She is exceptionally well informed about the relevant fields, particularly stress and trauma, and also draws on a range of social science and health disciplines, including recent work on neuroscience. The resulting synthesis is creative, original, and rigorous. Regehr provides a literate, timely analysis of how stress and trauma affect decision-making in social workers. Using in part her own substantial research program on social workers' risk assessment and decision-making activities, Regehr analyzes social workers' experience of stress and trauma in their work, as well as approaches to mitigation of stress and trauma. With its extensive review of post-traumatic stress and acute stress disorder literature, the book could be readily used by teachers, scholars, and practitioners in social work and related fields. Drawing on her wide experience, Regehr teases out how stress and trauma affect social workers and their work in this well-written and practice-relevant book. Timely in this era of doubted experts, this book will equip social workers, their managers, their supervisors, and educators with knowledge and reflective commentary about the impact of stress and trauma and what can be done to maintain good decision-making and risk taking. Stress, Trauma, and Decision-Making in Social Work, written by a renowned researcher-practitioner with decades of experience in the area of occupational and traumatic stress, offers its readers an innovative, trauma-informed decision-making model for social workers in high-risk situations and those working with traumatized populations. This book is quite useful for social workers at large, and it covers the most important aspects in the daily life of social workers.