Human Rights-Based Approaches to Clinical Social Work

S. Megan Berthold, PhD, LCSW is Assistant Professor in Casework at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. She is a Certified Trauma Specialist and has worked with diverse refugee and asylum seeking survivors of torture, war traumas, human trafficking, female genital mutilation and other traumas since the mid-1980s in refugee camps in Asia and in the United States. She was a clinician and educator in refugee camps in Nepal, the Philippines and on the Thai-Cambodian border. Before joining the UCONN faculty, she worked in Los Angeles for twenty years with the Program for Torture Victims and other non-profits. Dr. Berthold conducts federally funded clinical outcomes research with torture survivors and NIMH funded research examining the prevalence of torture and its mental and physical health consequences among Cambodian refugees. She frequently testifies as an expert witness in U.S. Immigration Court and has trained numerous social workers and other professionals about vicarious trauma and resilience, self-care and trauma-informed approaches to working with diverse survivors guided by cultural humility. She is a member of CSWE (serving on CSWE’s Taskforce on Advanced Social Work Trauma Education), NASW, SSWR, APHA, the International Society for Health and Human Rights (ISHHR), the International Society of Traumatic Stress Specialists (ISTSS) (appointed to the Leadership Council), and is a member and former board member of the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists (ATSS). In 2009 she was selected as the National Association of Social Work’s national social worker of the year.

• Rights-based vs. Conventional Needs-based Approaches to Clinical Social Work.- Rights-based Approach to Working with Torture Survivors.- Rights-based Clinical Practice with Survivors of Human Trafficking.- Intimate Partner Violence and a Rights-based Approach to Healing.- The Use of Self in Engaging in Rights-based Clinical Practice.

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