Meditation and Empowerment of Female Trauma Survivors with Co-Occurring Disorders: Implications for Social Work Practice

Abstract The addition of an empowerment perspective to treatment of female trauma survivors with co-occurring mental health and substance use concerns has been found to be beneficial. Meditation is a mental health intervention that has the potential for increasing feelings of empowerment amongst this population. This qualitative study explores the experiences of female trauma survivors with co-occurring disorders engaging in a meditation intervention and its impact on their feelings of empowerment. Grounded theory approaches were used to analyse in-depth interviews with participants (N = 32). Results from analysis of the data show the process through which meditation allowed the women to gain empowerment in order to develop skills to heal on their own. This study provides evidence of the use of meditation as a viable strength-based intervention for social workers in order to increase feelings of empowerment amongst female trauma survivors of interpersonal violence with co-occurring disorders. Future research should expand understanding of this empowerment pathway by exploring the impact of meditation within other populations with high levels of trauma. Increasing feelings of empowerment amongst those who have both mental health and substance use diagnoses has been shown to be helpful. Meditation is a mental health intervention that can help clients improve positive feelings about themselves. This study uses interviews to ask female trauma survivors (N = 32) questions about a meditation intervention they received whilst in an in-patient rehabilitation centre. The results show a process through which meditation made the women feel more empowered. The study shows that meditation is a potential intervention that social workers could use to make female trauma survivors feel more empowered.