Psychiatric Social Work provides mental health services like therapy and counseling services to clients on a one-on-one basis. Every day, the stigma that shrouds the topic of mental illness fades a little more.
Most always Psychiatric Social Workers include working with people who are hospitalized with mental health issues. this could be inpatient or it could be outpatient facilities. The facilities not only provide help and care for patients but also for the families and friends of the patient.
We still have a lot more to talk about. However, the presence of an ongoing conversation at all is a mark of steady progress. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that one in five adults in the U.S. experience mental illness each year. And one in six children experiences it.
It will take much effort from psychiatric social workers to close the mental health gap. This term refers to the millions of patients who fail to receive treatment, or treatment is delayed. Right now, the average gap between mental disorder symptom onset and treatment (also courtesy of NAMI) is eleven years. It is the psychiatric social worker’s mission to decrease discrepancies such as these in patients across the mental health spectrum.
A Brief Overview in the Field of Social Workers
Given their education and training background, psychiatric social workers focus on more than direct therapy. Master’s-level clinical social workers can provide therapy and counseling services. They help the client work through their mental illness. But the sociological perspective calls for a slightly broader approach.
Psychiatric social work entails counseling, re-integration training, financial resource accommodation, healthcare service accommodation, housing services, and more. Further details on each of these roles will be provided below. The point is to address the mental health problem directly and also facilitate the client’s healthy function in society.
Mental illness can significantly affect work status, relationships, learning ability, conflict resolution skills, physical well-being, and more. Therefore, the solution requires a thorough and comprehensive approach.
Depending on the level of education and experience, psychiatric social workers may provide therapy and counseling services on a one-on-one basis, or they may have a supervisory role within an organization or department. One day, a social worker may be assisting a client in gathering legal documents for a hearing, and the next, they may be coordinating a group psychotherapy session. Since no two clients are the same, no two approaches will be the same.
Who Psychiatric Social Workers Serve
It would be reductive to lump everyone into the “mental illness” category because different psychiatric conditions can require drastically different social work approaches. Below are listed some of the most common mental health disorders that psychiatric social workers encounter regularly.
Anxiety
Often attributed to the increased demands of a post-industrial society, the staggering prevalence of anxiety disorders (19+ million adults in the U.S.) hints at systemic causes. These disorders can cause clients to develop aversions to important social environments, like work or school.
Depression
Clinical Social workers are aware of the strong correlation between depression and suicide, but depression is linked to serious health conditions as well. People suffering from depression are much more likely to develop heart problems and hormone disorders than those without mental illness. Psychiatric social workers must be holistic in their assessments to catch these issues.
ADHD
Still affected by the controversy, ADHD often goes misdiagnosed, and some parents object to medication. Still, more than six percent of children in the U.S. are being medicated for ADHD. Especially when untreated, ADHD symptoms can significantly affect educational outcomes.
Bipolar Disorder
Characterized by manic “highs” and depressed “lows,” bipolar disorder affects everyone differently. Even if a client is on mood stabilizers, they may still display bipolar behavior. Psychiatric social workers help bipolar patients to identify when they’re having an episode, develop an action plan and prevent self-harm or other adverse events that may result.
Substance Abuse
Often viewed as just a symptom of one or more of the above disorders, substance abuse is a mental health disorder in its own right. It has measurable effects on the brain, some of which manifest over long periods. Addiction counseling is often the first step to addressing an untreated mental health disorder.
What Psychiatric Social Workers Do and Where They Do It
As mentioned, psychiatric social workers seek to alleviate the strain that mental illness exerts on important social institutions, such as workplace or school behavior, physical health, relationships, and so on. Since mental illness is often fluid, difficult to identify, and unique to each person, the first step is critical: assessment.
An effective psychosocial assessment requires psychiatric social workers to consider a range of factors that comprise a patient’s psychological state. The purpose of these assessments is to delineate the patient’s deficits while adding context to the case with their relevant history. This allows for a much more targeted approach to care. Assessments may include points like:
- Behavioral history
- Physical examination
- History of mental health treatments and diagnoses
- Current living situation and support structure
- Neurodevelopmental status
- Current medications and treatments
- Psychiatric emergency services
- community resources
- Help mental health challenges
- Provide psychosocial assessments
- Access patient’s mental health status
- Help family members
As always, assessment data can vary based on a particular case, but the above points capture the basic gist.
A psychiatric social workers can also work in the criminal justice system. These facilities will often have their own hospital settings that can help inmates who are suffering with mental illnesses
What is a Formal Plan of Care for Social Workers?
The natural jumping-off point from the assessment is the plan of care, also referred to as case management. This can vary greatly based on the environment, which will be described shortly. In this step, the psychiatric social worker collaborates with any other professionals in the client’s team to apply interventions, monitor progress, communicate progress to family, recommend resources, and coordinate discharge when appropriate.
Where are Psychiatric Social Workers Jobs?
Psychiatric social workers can work for inpatient facilities, government programs, crisis response units, standalone outpatient facilities, and group therapy environments. Each environment brings with it a unique set of demands as it concerns communicating with professionals in related disciplines – as with doctors and nurses in a hospital – and structuring interventions to make the most impact before and after discharge. Regardless of the specific environment, psychiatric social workers will be faced with ethical dilemmas and other challenges on an almost daily basis.
Some Jobs Include:
- psychiatric social workers work in helping with labor statistics in the field
- Work as substance abuse social workers to provide mental health services
- Work as mental health social workers
- Social workers work with organizations with community resources
- Work as various mental health professionals
- Social workers can Run a practice as licensed clinical social workers running a mental health team
- Run groups for family members
- Run a clinic to Provide individual and family services
- Work in substance abuse hospitals to help with various mental disorders
What Makes Work Challenging For Psychiatric Social Workers?
The obvious issues, like seeing clients in restraints and/or heavy sedation, being verbally or physically attacked by someone having an episode, and so on are common enough, but there are also more insidious problems working below the surface
It’s very difficult to objectively measure the effects of mental illness, and when a client’s state changes, it’s often equally invisible. Assessment is described by this piece and most others as a definitive step early on in the client-social worker relationship, but the truth with psychiatric social work is that assessment is an ongoing process.
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