MSW Personal Purpose Statement PTSD Veterans VA

A veteran engages in a therapy session at a VA hospital, accompanied by a service dog, as a therapist provides support and guidance for PTSD management.

1: Life Experiences: Growing up with an abusive and alcoholic father was one of the principal inspirations driving my determination to pursue a career as an MSW Professional. The deep suffering I endured during my childhood and adolescence fueled my desire to help others in similar situations. As a child, I urged my mother to divorce and constantly searched for a means of escape, even though I faced punishment for speaking out. Nevertheless, I found the strength to rise and meet my challenges and have worked hard to overcome my painful past. I now own a home, hold a degree, and have maintained steady employment for some time. I am seeking a career change and professional as well as personal growth. Therefore, I am applying to your MSW Program at ____ University, my top choice for graduate school due to the superlative nature of your curriculum, diversity, and student support.

My recovery has been sporadic and gradual, taking several years. In my thirties, I became pregnant in an abusive relationship with a drug addict. Fortunately, his addictions kept him out of the house for prolonged periods. I took my national exams, obtained a professional license as a Certified Massage Therapist, and became financially independent, ending all contact with my child's father. This situation put me in self-preservation mode, especially since I now have a daughter. Thankfully, I was able to completely break free from my own negative behaviors and co-dependencies and move on.

I now have a much greater appreciation for life and have come to terms with my past and my family. It helps to limit contact with them to do so. I am now a happy person with a drama-free life, always keeping things simple and straightforward. Now that my daughter is in her teens, I have the free time to return to school so that I can pursue the career that I find most fulfilling, Social Work.

Now 42 years old, I have only remembered for a little more than a decade the worst of the gruesome details of the abuse I endured as a child at the hands of my biological father: physical, emotional, sexual; constant and always violent, and it continued for many years. Once the memories came flooding back in, it took me years to turn tragedy into triumph: understanding, reflecting, and healing.

I enjoyed success as a certified massage professional after earning my BA in Art, with an emphasis in painting and printmaking, from California State University, Chico in 2000. In 2002, I received my certificate from the ____ Institute of Massage Studies in ____. This past January of 2016, I began volunteering with girls who have been victims of sexual trafficking, very much affirming my decision to become an MSW professional.

I am changing careers and going back to school to find happiness in a career for the next quarter of a century, working with people who need help—the underdogs. Social Work is my dream job. Ending the cycle of abuse is important to me. I am not yet certain which social group or population I will focus on. On one hand, I have experience working with abused women and their children; on the other, I am now volunteering in Occupational Therapy at a local VA hospital. The more contact I have with veterans and the more I read in my free time these days about veterans' issues and affairs—especially the challenge presented by PTSD—the more I think about working at a VA hospital after earning my MSW Degree. I am also interested in the elderly and thus might pursue and learn all that I can under your expert guidance at ____ University about the issues facing older veterans. Recently, I have been exploring suicide among Vietnam veterans and have been horrified by the statistics, with many more having taken their own lives than fell in combat in Vietnam. I am beginning to understand the scope of the mental health challenges of returning veterans and how ongoing, prolonged wars in other regions of the world take a profound toll on new generations of young people.

My passion for healing, my own difficult history, and my recent experience helping young women and girls who have been victimized, raped, battered, and sold, fill me to an extent I never thought possible: mission, vocation, and redemption. I also volunteer with ____, a nonprofit youth football team in Las Vegas. I find enormous joy in helping disadvantaged kids get involved in sports and learn the art of teamwork. I also volunteer at ____, helping provide meals to seniors and lunches to children. I take part in and very much enjoy the 5k runs for charity. My volunteer work with trafficked girls forced to work in the adult industry, even though they were legal minors, has resulted in my learning the full extent to which trafficking of girls and young women is a global problem of mammoth scope. I also feel called to this area of social work.

2: Social Work Philosophy: For me, the social work profession and its core values revolve around the principle of helping the weakest and most vulnerable members of our community. I have incorporated these values in my work with both trafficked girls and veterans facing a wide range of disabilities and challenges, veterans returning from war, in each case helping people feel that they have attachment to their community. My compassion and warmth are the greatest strengths or attributes I bring to the social work profession, along with my unbridled enthusiasm for our field. I want to dedicate myself to a lifetime of healing, helping returning veterans cope with their experiences and the all-too-frequent challenges of reintegration into civilian society. I want to help minimize the damage to their families as well.

I am especially interested in preventing veteran suicide. Once I earn the MSW from ____ University, I will be well-positioned, considering my previous experience, to assume leadership roles in this great struggle. Nothing seems worse to me than the situation we find ourselves in today, losing dozens of veterans to suicide each week. Something must be done.

3 Diversity: After earning my degree and becoming licensed as an MSW Professional, I would like to help abused women and children, & teens, providing them with the knowledge, tools, and support base they need to be safe and recover from the abuse they have endured. I want to steer them in the right direction, letting them know about the resources available to help them. Appreciation of diversity is fundamental to the career I seek, especially since victims of domestic violence tend to come from the humbler sectors of our society, disproportionately women and children of color.

I hope to be accepted into the Master of Social Work program at ____ University so that I might have the privilege of spending my professional life caring for women and children in need, or veterans if I decide to pursue my current interest in that direction. I look forward to an intense immersion experience at ____, studying the full gamut of social work issues: particularly domestic violence, pregnant women—especially teens—and the broad variety of special mental health issues they face. I also look forward to learning as much as I can about veterans' issues and PTSD.

 4: Personal Strengths: I see my strongest and most valuable attributes, in addition to compassion and empathy, as determination, strength, a very high level of motivation, and a tenacious desire to help everyone I come into contact with who is suffering, in a professional or volunteer capacity, to the extent I am able. Furthermore, I look forward to continuing to cultivate these attributes throughout my professional lifetime. As a result of my own suffering and recovery as a victim of child sexual abuse, I have increasingly come to appreciate how life can change in a moment, in the blink of an eye. I have known great hardship and tragedy, and that is what drives me to a career in Social Work.

In my search for answers, I have read extensively about addiction, trauma, healing, and recovery, and I hope to have the privilege of counseling those who suffer from trauma and/or addictions in the future as an MSW professional. This is the right time for me to go to graduate school to prepare myself for making my maximum social contribution.

Thank you for considering my application to the Social Work program at ____ University.

MSW Personal Purpose Statement PTSD Veterans VA