Social Work Practice Challenges in the United States Air Force: An Existential Perspective

This conceptual study examines the challenges associated with United States Air Force social work practice as viewed through and existential (spiritual) lens. This study includes six sections or chapters - introduction and overview, literature review, methodology, findings, discussion and implications. The first chapter introduces the topic of existentialism (as a form of spirituality) and social work practice and defines the terms associated with this study. Additionally, this chapter breaks down the topic of existentialism and social work practice into four main areas of focus - spirituality and social work practice, spirituality in the military, United States Air Force (USAF) social work practice, and the challenges associated with USAF social work practice. The intent of this section is to show the relevance of existentialism in practice, specifically as it relates to USAF social work practice. This section also serves as a rationale for the research basis of this study - applying an existential (spiritual) lens to a social work practice setting.;The second section or chapter of this study, the literature review, examines the existential literature and gives background information on the topic. Further, this chapter examines the existential literature specifically as it pertains to the four components of the existential framework developed as part of this study - unique subjectivity, individual as relations, individual as free to choose and individual as meaning maker. The third chapter, the methodology chapter, first lists the research questions and gives the rationale for each of the questions. Next, the criteria for text selection are given to include what terms were used to identify and select the material used for the literature review and the findings section of this study. Finally, the third section looks at the research design and gives a rationale as to why a conceptual design was selected.;The fourth chapter, the findings, is broken down into two major sections. The first section gives the rationale for the existential framework and its use in the analysis portion of this study. The analysis findings were broken down into two sections - the non-deployed social work practice setting and the deployed social work practice setting. Within each of these two sections, the existential framework components were used to analyze the literature associated with the USAF social work practice challenges. The non-deployed practice setting looked at the significance of context, understanding the military culture, the impact of military characteristics on USAF social work practice, the fluid and complex nature of relationships and the lack of anonymity associated with the USAF social work practice setting. Within the deployed practice setting section, a background was given along with the unique characteristics of the current military environment, the lack of research, and the role of the deployed environment. Also within this section, the associated concepts of vicarious trauma, moral injury and compassion fatigue were examined in relation to the existential framework components proposed within this study.;The major findings associated with this section found that the existential components do provide a solid overall understanding of the challenges associated with social work practice challenges in the USAF. Within each challenge area the existential components provide an understanding of the issues associated with USAF social work practice. The intent of the findings section is to not only provide an increased understanding of the nature of USAF social work practice, but to identify areas of further research.;The final two chapters, discussion and implications, examines the existential framework as a whole and discusses the implications associated with the application of the existential framework to the challenges associated with USAF social work practice. The discussion chapter applies critique questions to the framework as a whole with the intent of determining the usefulness of the framework in informing the nature of USAF social work challenges. The total force fitness model is also discussed to determine how the U.S. military is currently applying spirituality to the military environment/culture. The final chapter, the implications chapter, identifies implications for social work research, education, policy and theory. The chapter concludes with the study's limitations and a final conclusion.