Social work in the age of disconnection: Narrative case studies

In 2020, social workers stood out as essential, frontline workers. This edited text brings together the stories of nine clinical social workers working during COVID-19, exploring the disconnections caused by a forced use of technology as well as the disconnections apparent in a time of social injustice. In the spirit of tolerating the ambiguous spaces of unknowing, the textbook presents no right answers or specific agendas. Instead, it inspires reader engagement and connective thinking by presenting a series of explorations where writing is as much a method of inquiry as a statement about what is true. This book begins with three accounts of "Connection During Times of Disconnection" in cases that show the ways that young and old have benefited from the technology. Then, in "Ambivalence and Connection through the Screen", the book presents cases that challenge hopeful views, worrying about the unique effects of 21st-century dissociation and disembodiment. Finally, in "Bridging the Gap: Disconnection and Reconnection During Times of Social Change", it explores the disconnection between humans in an age of racial conflict and inequality. Employing narrative strategies to capture this transformative moment of our history, these chapters will explore the effects of technology and social media on psychotherapy, the delivery of services for the chronically mentally ill and elderly, as well as the consequences of recent cultural shifts on our conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, the immigrant experience, and political activism. While traditional research methodologies tend to address social problems as if they were divorced from the lives and experiences of human beings, these chapters employ phenomenological description of how the existing system functions, to identify theory-to-practice gaps and to recover the experiences of the person within the various institutional structures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Trauma, flight and migration: Psychoanalytic perspectives

This book brings together leading international psychoanalysts to discuss what psychoanalysis can offer to people who have experienced trauma, flight, and migration. The four parts of the book cover several elements of this work, including psychoanalytic projects beyond the couch, and collaboration with the UN. Each chapter presents an example of the applications of psychoanalysis with a specific group or in a particular context, from working with refugees in China to understanding the experiences of women who have witnessed political violence in Peru. Trauma, flight, and migration have become signatures of our time. Towards the end of 2021 there were 82.4 million migrants and refugees seeking asylum from their countries of origin in countries far away from war, civil unrest, and economic turmoil. Migrants and refugees often suffer from mental health problems, having experienced crises caused by dislocation from their homes, with a loss of all that is familiar. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world in a previously unimaginable way within a very short time. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased social injustice: the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, the rich and the poor, has widened. Many of the psychoanalysts who have written chapters for this book will address the profound experience of limitation and loss in the face of pervasive structural violence in the 21st century. The book reveals the thinking and work of a small group of the many psychoanalysts who are currently working in the humanitarian field. The innovative book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists looking to learn more about working with people who have experienced the impact of traumatic movement or migration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The Masks We Wear: Watchmen, Infrastructural Racism, and Anonymity

As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commentary that emerges from HBO's Watchmen speaks to our contemporary moment, replete with animosity, distrust, and wounding. Race, the legacy of racial injustice, and anonymity are major themes found throughout the series, which highlight the complicated nature of social control and the infrastructural legacy of racism. The mask itself is a site of struggle with polarizing calls for freedom from the mask as tyranny and freedom through the mask as safety, all during a public health crisis. In Watchmen, the deployment of infrastructural control and the implications of masking and unmasking are enacted through racist ideologies and promises of safety through anonymity. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Television & New Media is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Pandemics as the great levellers? Class, community and capital in US-American short stories

This article focuses on literature's potential for healing – both medical and socio-political – in times of severe crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Affect is an important literary tool to make people aware of social inequalities, in particular reading or writing short stories with the experience of a simultaneous real-life pandemic. Reading is an embodied act through which the reader enters into a dialogue with both the author and the text. Emotions emerge that are often more deeply stored in memory than the words as such, and that changes our perception of the world. This effect is also encapsulated in Siri Hustvedt's analysis of reading practices, Sara Ahmed's affect theory and Rita Felski's four ways of engaging with texts. I analyse John O'Hara's short story ‘The Doctor's Son' (1935), situated in rural Pennsylvania at the time of the 1918 Influenza, and Victor LaValle's ‘Recognition' (2020), resonating with the COVID-19 pandemic in an isolated apartment building in New York City. Both stories question the concept of pandemics as the great levellers by pointing out social injustice due to class and ethnic hierarchies. Taking Edgar Allan Poe's ‘The Masque of the Red Death' (1842) and Poe's emphasis on the preconceived and single effect of fear and subsequent horror caused by the ‘Red/Black Death', as a starting point, the article presents O'Hara's story as a manifestation of the medical, social and ethnic phenomena at work in 1918: social distancing, facial masks, closed public institu-tions, people's resistance to these measures and medical treatment along ethnic and class lines. LaValle's ‘Recognition' allows readers a glimpse into the relationship between an unnamed African American woman, who is also the narrator, and Pilar, a Colombian American woman, who dies of the virus. As part of a contemporary Decameron project, ‘Recognition' stresses the human need for community, communication and, thus mutual human recognition, giving the dead – whether rich or poor – a name and demanding to undo systemic social inequalities. In that sense, literature can heal the nation. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

New Insights in Psychological Processes: Introduction to the Special Issue on COVID-19 and Mental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an enormous global toll, including loss of life, economic upheaval, and social disruption. This strong induction of effects across both societal and individual levels provides opportunities for testing fundamental assumptions within biopsychosocial phenomena that would not have been otherwise possible-or at least not ethical-through human-induced experimental designs. Our special issue spotlights research within psychological science that has stayed in step with the complex set of events we refer to as "the pandemic." We review articles with novel approaches that speak to the variable effects of pandemic experiences across different groups of people, the impact of the pandemic on social support and social infrastructures, and the inequities and violations of justice that the pandemic has revealed. We conclude by highlighting future directions for psychological research.

Integrated Methods for Applying Critical Race Theory to Qualitative COVID-19 Equity Research.

Background: Racism persists, underscoring the need to rapidly document the perspectives and experiences of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) groups as well as marginalized populations (eg, formerly incarcerated people) during pandemics. Objective: This methods paper offers a model for using Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) and related critical methodologies (ie, feminist and decolonizing methods) to inform the conceptualization, methods, and dissemination of qualitative research undertaken in response to the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Sample: Using purposive snowball sampling, we identified organizations involved with health equity and social justice advocacy among BIPOC and socially marginalized populations. Focus group participants (N=63) included community members, organizers, activists, and health workers. Design: We conducted topic-specific (eg, reproductive justice) and population-specific (eg, Asian and Pacific Islander) focus groups (N=16 focus groups) in rapid succession using Zoom software. Methods: A self-reflexive, iterative praxis guided theorization, data collection and analysis. We obtained community input on study design, the semi-structured discussion guide, ethical considerations and dissemination. Applying PHCRP, we assessed our assumptions iteratively. We transcribed each interview verbatim, de-identified the data, then used two distinct qualitative techniques to code and analyze them: thematic analysis to identify unifying concepts that recur across focus groups and narrative analysis to keep each participant's story intact. Results: The praxis facilitated relationship-building with partners and supported the iterative assessment of assumptions. Logistical constraints included difficulty ensuring the confidentiality of virtual discussions. Conclusions: These novel approaches provide an effective model for community-engaged qualitative research during a pandemic.

SA's housing crisis requires full participation from public and private sector

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT : What has clearly emerged is that the government - be it at municipal, provincial or national level - cannot adequately, sustainably, and consistently fulfill its obligations to the citizens. Visions of a better, more inclusive future for all need to be elevated beyond political rhetoric, requiring an expertise that the government has demonstrated it cannot satisfactorily deliver on. The role of public-private partnerships and their significance in speeding up bureaucratic governmental processes has taken on more prominence as the pandemic has made the necessity for agile, flexible, timeous, outcomes-driven solutions imperative

COVID-19 and Social Injustice Messages Impact on Stress: An Abstract

This project probes the impact of COVID-19 and social injustice message framing on employee stress. Diversity in the workforce is a competitive advantage. Many organizations develop statements to signal their diversity appreciation (Jayne and Dipboye 2004). These messages receive favor from some stakeholders, but ridicule from others (Avery and McKay 2010). The appropriate message framing (self vs. other) can have consequences on employee behavior (Hung and Wyer 2011) and judgment (Chang and Hung 2018). It increases message elaboration and persuasion (Burnkrant and Unnava 1995). Ongoing messages and images about social injustice have had significant, negative effects on the physical and mental health of Black employees (Smith et al. 2011;Williams 2018). For Black people, the ability to regulate emotions during crisis is imperative. Non-Black people who experience stress from these sources may be less adept at emotion regulation in these instances. It is important to expose the effect of these messages as they may add stress communities experience during a crisis. A non-student sample of 174 subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions in which they read and considered a COVID-19 message and a social injustice message. The message content was manipulated through the use of other-focus language (“We”), self-focus language (“You”) or the absence of personal pronouns (Cober et al. 2001). Pre- and post-stress measures were completed for each message. The average stress level before the experiment was neutral (x = 4.11) with no significant group differences. Exposure to a COVID-19 message did not significantly change the stress level (t(169) = 1.46, p =.15, x = 4.35). However, exposure to the social injustice message following the COVID-19 message produced significant changes (t(171) = 2.94, p <.001, x = 3.22). The stress level of non-White subjects (x = 2.82) was reduced while the stress level of White subjects (x = 4.99) increased. Self-focus message framing (x = 4.47) received significantly higher evaluations than other-focus message framing (x = 3.69) and the control condition (x = 3.31) (F(2,167) = 5.08, p <.001). COVID-19 messages had no impact on stress levels. When the COVID-19 message was followed by a social injustice message, stress levels were lowered significantly for non-White subjects while they increased for White subjects. Self-focus message framing was most effective in communicating these messages versus other-focus messaging or non-specific messages. Culture influences how people perceive and respond to the world (Smith et al. 2009) whether at work or at home. An organization attempting to engage its cultural competence by supporting one demographic group may confront feelings of marginalization by another group. This is an important avenue of inquiry due to the gravity of events that preceded and followed COVID-19. It offers insight into how different groups evaluate corporate responses to social issues. Employees and consumers are watching. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Social Injustice in the Neoliberal Pandemic Era for Homeless Persons With Mental Illness: A Qualitative Inquiry From India.

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented an unprecedented challenge globally. It is much bigger than a bio-medical concern now with the multitudes of socio-economic, socio-political, socio-cultural, and psycho-social impact, which are likely to outlast the pandemic itself by far and long. The pandemic and the resulting challenges across societies highlighted the existing social injustices in a neoliberal world for historically marginalized populations like homeless persons with mental illness (HPMI). The nationwide lockdown in India to resist the spread of the virus posed a unique challenge to this vulnerable population. The present study thus attempts to understand the experience of HPMI during the COVID-19 induced lockdown through the theoretical framework of social justice vis-à-vis injustice. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted on seven HPMI rehabilitated in the community through an NGO situated in Kolkata, India. Seven stakeholders have also been interviewed to understand their experience in providing services to the HPMI during the COVID-19 induced lockdown. Analyses of the narratives have been done using initial coding, focused coding and axial coding through the process of constant comparison of constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology. Critical insights from the study bring out experiences of HPMI during COVID-19 as a victim of structural violence, highlighting their exclusion and victimization due to the existing marginalized status, living closer to the edge as a consequence of the lockdown, lack of awareness of the gravity of the pandemic situation. The experiences of the stakeholders, on the other hand, pointed out the role of community members and social workers in partially mitigating the challenges. This study indicates that to mitigate the aftermaths, stakeholders, including community members, need to work together for rebuilding and enhancing the strength and resilience of the marginalized populations like HPMI, who are historically victims of social injustice in the neoliberal pandemic era.

Food insecurity and social injustice: The plight of urban poor African immigrants in South Africa during the COVID-19 crisis.

We discuss the plight of urban poor African immigrants from the perspective of the right to food (food availability, accessibility and adequacy) for everyone during the COVID-19 in South Africa. Despite their disrupted sources of livelihood, the majority of the African immigrants are without a social welfare safety net and have little hope of benefiting from the Government relief packages. Consequently, it seems that the increase in the triple burden of food insecurity, poverty and malnutrition compounded with social injustice and income inequality is inevitable for the urban poor African immigrants in South Africa. Even though the Government may not have the capacity to address food insecurity by itself, the Government should endeavour to make the limited resources to access food equally available to all with no social injustice. By working hand in hand with foreign national associations, township councillors and other stakeholders, such as the food banks and faith-based organisations, that have stepped forward to try and bridge the widening incapacity of the Government to feed the food insecure, the nexus of food insecurity and social injustice of African immigrants will be alleviated.