title: From patient to therapatient: social work students coping with mental illness.
abstract: We explored the experiences of social work students with psychiatric difficulties and focused on their challenges as they went through the different stages of development as health care professionals. We interviewed 12 social work students with psychiatric difficulties and analyzed the data using the immersion/crystallization method. The findings reveal the developmental process they underwent from being patients to being "therapatients" (therapists who are also patients; here, therapists coping with psychiatric difficulties). This process included four stages: an initial exploration of the health care world; questioning the possibility of a patient being a therapist and feeling incompetent; identifying their ability to be professionals; and integrating between their patient and therapist parts to become a therapatient. Understanding this process and finding ways to help students through it is crucial to allowing the patient and therapist parts to "live" together and enrich each other, and to allowing integration of professional knowledge and personal experience.
authors.affiliation: Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel miriamgold1@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goldberg
authors.affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Noami
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hadas-Lidor
authors.affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Orit
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Karnieli-Miller
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012947:Social Work / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: education, professional; lived experience; mental health and illness; qualitative analysis; social work