What is the Social Work Perspective of Mental Health?
Welcome back to the Social Work Café blog, where this week we dive deeper into the world of mental health.
I’ve had some great conversations with social workers across season 01 that touch on the topic of mental health, such as:
· Mikaela Higgins (Episode 10)
· Andreia Schineanu (Episode 13)
We traversed topics like the scope of the health sector, the wellbeing of social workers, private practice, trauma-informed social work, accredited mental health, and working with older adults.
The breadth of these conversations shows that mental health is relevant across the entire human services sector.
As such, it is timely to explore more deeply the social work perspective and contribution in mental health contexts.
In the latest episode, I was joined by my fabulous colleague, hallway buddy, and morning tea confidant, Dr. Fredrik Velander.
Fredrik is another colleague with whom I enjoy talking because he is often immersed in reading the latest literature on leadership, healthy organisations, and mental health.
His story of finding social work resonates with many other mature-aged students who I have had the pleasure of teaching.
Although it is not every day you hear about a mechanic making a career change to social work, very cool.
Considering his thirst for knowledge, I am not surprised Fredrik did a PhD and moved from a remote town in north Sweden to remote outback Western Australia to undertake research on the harms associated with excessive alcohol use.
Fredrik explains that despite the vast differences in climate between these locations, the attitudes of locals were quite similar in relation to strong beliefs around self-reliance and not talking about mental health, especially if you are a man.
This leads nicely into our conversation about the social work perspective of mental health, which Fredrik clarifies as being holistic, trauma-informed, and multidimensional.
While we have this multilayered perspective, it can often be challenged when working in contexts dominated by the biomedical perspective of mental health.
Our holistic view emphasises how sociocultural and environmental factors can impact the wellbeing of someone, which is often ignored within the biomedical perspective.
Considering these tensions, Fredrik advises that social workers maintain a strong professional identity based on our core values.
We can then advocate for our perspective and role within mental health settings, but any role where we work with people experiencing distress.
Another great bit of advice from Fredrik is about lifelong learning (a theme that keeps coming up in season 01), which can involve studying mental health subjects at a minimum.
Beyond that, we must keep in mind that the evidence base around health and wellbeing keeps changing rapidly (for example, Fredrik raises new research in areas like nutrition and epigenetics), so we need to be constantly aware of the research and its implications for our work.
When answering the last question about social work, Fredrik contextualises his answer within the mental health field:
A values-based profession where the core tenets of our code of ethics needs to be embodied by everyone working in the mental health field; on top of that comes the ability to work with compassion and empathy, and all of this is further emphasised in the mental health field due to the vulnerability of those we work with.
If we wanted this definition to be applicable to the entire profession, I think we could remove the references to mental health.
Regardless, I think the definition works quite well, and it reflects Fredrik’s points about how we must always see the humanity in people who are struggling, seek to protect human rights, and address stigma related to mental health.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Fredrik, and I think we will need to have him back in the café so we can talk more about mental health, especially in relation to men.
Stay focused social work.
Dr. B
