Social Workers & Mental-Health System

The purpose of this research is to examine how social workers fit in to the U.S. mental-health system. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which U.S. community mental-health systems can be analyzed, with reference to key early figures in the whole process of shaping mental-health delivery and caregiving practices, and then to discuss the current status, including cost-related factors, of American inpatient and outpatient community mental-health systems, as well as the role of the social worker in such systems.

To understand modern American mental-health systems, it is necessary to realize how relatively young the very concept of organized and humane mental-health treatment is in Western civilization. Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, is credited with being the father of American psychiatry, partly on account of his advocacy of humane and systematic treatment of the mentally ill. Rush's Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind was published in 1812, the first American work on psychiatry ("Rush," Funk & Wagnalls, 1975). Rush appears to have taken a practical, clinical approach to treatment, as evident in his encouraging patients to keep a journal of their symptoms (Riordan, 1996); in the modern period, so-called scriptotherapy is suggested as an adjunct to counseling. The specifics of some of Rush's views have been interrogated by subsequent research. For example, Rush viewed alc

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e, specifically: to (1) enhance the problem-solving and coping capacities of people, (2) link people with systems that provide them with resources, services, and opportunities, (3) promote the effective and humane operation of these systems, and (4) contribute to the development and improvement of social policy (Pincus & Minahan, 1973, p. 9). The formulation is based on the assumption that modern society and institutions are highly complex and may overwhelm individuals. Thus they require intervention of professionals familiar with institutional systems to assist individuals and family members in interacting effectively within it, for the benefit of both individual and the integrity of the systems themselves. The role of the social worker, in this view, is that of facilitator or agent of appropriate interaction between society and individual. Pincus and Minahan cite four basic "systems" of social work practice: the change agent system, the client system, the target system, and the action system. In the change agent system, the social worker becomes the pivot of interaction between wider society and the individual who may need help coping with it. In the client system, the change agent figures as the professional providing services

Category: Psychology - S