Between two worlds: The psychospiritual crisis of a dying adolescent

Summary.

Clinical social workers are ill‐prepared by education or practice experience to deal with spiritual issues, in particular those surrounding the death of a young client. This paper presents a case study of the work of a clinical social worker through the psychospiritual crisis of the dying and death of her adolescent client. The study employs extensive clinical material to trace the emergence of the client's personal metaphors as he used them to cope with stressors in his life and finally to disengage from it. It analyzes the material within the context of spiritual development and transpersonal theory in an effort to build theory in the area of clinical social work with dying adolescents.