Wounded Healers: Graduate Students with Histories of Trauma in a Family Violence Course

Abstract

Social work students are witness to a variety of challenges from course content through scenarios, videos, role-plays, and field practice. Students may be vulnerable to experiencing vicarious traumatization from this exposure. Some students, however, may have personal histories of trauma and may therefore experience posttraumatic stress reactions due to triggering of past trauma through course content. This case study examines feedback from three graduate students from a family violence class who self-identified that they had personal histories of trauma from family violence. Their feedback can be beneficial to instructors in managing students' reactions that might be triggered from course content.

Keywords:

• trauma
• family violence
• practice