Mental Health and Social Work Practices

This assignment examines the practices and methods employed by social workers in providing mental healthcare. It emphasizes the importance of ensuring mentally ill individuals lead healthy lives with dignity and equality. The analysis draws upon research and literature to understand the challenges and best practices in this field, highlighting the role of collaboration and community support.

ASS066-1 UNDERSTANDING THE
HUMAN SERVICES
1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7
2

INTRODUCTION
The ground of human services is generally defined, uniquely approaching the purpose of
meeting human needs through an interdisciplinary information base, which focuses on
prevention as well as remedies for difficulties and keeping responsibilities to improve the overall
quality of life of service population (Goffman, 2017). There are various people who face
hardships and needs help to live a normal life. This help can be delivered through health care
organisations, network agencies etc. Human services workers help clients to become more self-
sufficient.
The present essay is based on mental health workers who perform various types of roles
and responsibilities for treating and caring such patients. The present essay will cover policies
and regulations for treating mental health patients. Along with this, the successes and downfalls
of the professional/occupational role of mental health care workers will be discussed.
MAIN BODY
Mental health service workers provide care to clients who are mentally ill and not able to
take care of themselves. Along with this, they help clients in order to make them self-sufficient
and receive proper care.
According to the view of Acharya, Maru and Kohrt, (2017), human service workers who
are specialists in mental health assist individual and their families to deal with daily living. They
provide services to people. The development of mental health service workers must be
encouraged to promote well being as well as treating illness to make reality of the long-standing
rhetoric that health is more important as compared to the absence of illness. The origin and
development of this profession has a long history. After the arrival of 19th century, terms related
to mental hygiene were defined so that an awareness can be created among people regarding this.
Mental hygiene movements highlights the mental disorders and there was need for the people
who could help people to understand and deal with them.
Earlier to socialisation of these movements mentally retarded patients were ignored. But
when these movements took place in various societies then researches were conducted for the
field. It gave rise to the need of new profession which have great expertise in understanding
3

mental illness. In this way service providers which provide treatment to psychological disorders
were arrived.
Melton, Petrila and Condie, (2017)argued that if health services are going to provide
primacy to enhance well being instead of treating illness then health workers can adopt new
approaches to work with an individual. However, developing health oriented instead of illness-
oriented services lead to prove more difficult for health care workers.
Mental health is known as increasing issue with the mental disorder and it leads to
contribute a wide range of diseases burden for the nations (Hepworth, Rooney and Strom-
Gottfried, 2016). There are few policies, which are developed for mental health care workers that
need to be followed while providing services to patients. It is important to provide better access
to mental health users and reduce the time of waiting. It is important to ensure that all people
receive quality services on time without any delays.
Development of the profession:
With the advancing technologies and the level of knowledge people are getting more
aware and concern about their mental health. With the advent of 20th century the need of this
profession is highly experienced by the communities. The support of government authorities
played vital role in the development of this profession. Mental health acts guarantees that the
sufferers of mental diseases are not discriminated and their right of well being is protected. It
encourages the support of health care professionals (Why mental health services in England are
finally receiving attention, 2017). The stressful life style has made it very common to deal with
these issues at least once in life. So the profession also provide great career opportunities in the
field. These factors played significant role in the development of this profession.
There are various roles and responsibilities, which are needed to be performed by mental
health workers at the time of providing care to patients. Mental health workers are also known as
psychiatric technicians. Their role is to monitor mental health patients in the healthcare
organisation. Further, their responsibilities assist the service users to eat, maintain cleanliness,
dress etc. Duties of mental health care providers are to observe the patient’s behaviour. Further,
they should record their condition and deliver them in therapeutic and recreational activities. At
the time when the patient becomes physically violent then mental health workers used to confine
them with all the legal powers.
4

Vandewalle, Debyser, and Verhaeghe, (2016) explained that taking care of mental
patients is not an easy task. It is because sometimes they may get violent and harm the users
physically. Along with this, care workers also get sometimes frustrated while handling patients.
Due to this reason, they may not treat patients properly. Hence, it is important to develop a wide
range of policies in order to ensure that all patients receive services effectively.
It is critically analysed that in society health care work represents a most important
valueble in society. An individual with serious health issues have a right to exercise the same
social roles as compared to other citizens (Green, Albanese and Aarons, 2014). With the passage
of time, society started supporting mental health people and provide them respect it so that they
can live quality lives. A society is not focusing on fostering support to providing health care
services. Through encouraging them to accept and offer support to people who give their time to
work, course, method of treatment. Hence, any adoptive environment that admits, have faith in,
forgives, and looks to the decent in each and every person (Epstein, 2018).
As stated earlier that to work as a mental health worker is not an easy task because
service providers face wider range of successes and downfalls. To care patients who are not
mentally fit is extremely challenging task. These service providers have various professional and
ethical challenges in performing their roles effectively. Some of them are as follows:
 Lack of awareness regarding illness is the major challenge for these professionals. The
validation of this fact is that most of these providers themselves neglect their mental
illness.
 The limited amount of resources and funds make it difficult to made these services
accessible to large group. Hence, they find it difficult to create awareness among people.
 Severely affected patient's do no provide proper coordination to the service providers. So
they find it difficulty to provide treatment.
 The number of patients is increasing with higher rate. But the researches in the profession
are limited which makes it difficult for these professionals to provide effective services to
every individual.
As per the American Psychological Association, patients are in emotional pain and
psychologists should often suppress their own reaction to what they hear in respect to provide
support to patients. However, burnout can take place in the behaviour of a health professional
because they are always required to meet the needs of patients as well as theirs.
5

Further, mental health care worker is at risk related to injury and violence. In order to
minimise the risk of patient’s violence in the health care firm, they need to do regular practice
(Wahlbeck, 2015).
At the time when care workers understand that mental health problems are probably the
single most important factor to be considered then they can easily provide quality services. As
per the opinion of Paudel, Gilles and Katz, (2014) mental health are strong consistent for in
relation to “humanitarian and egalitarian ideals”, which creates value base for health care
workers.
Recommendations for the service providers in the field of mental health:
These professionals can play a significant role in improving the mental health. They must
ensure that they develop better understanding of the situation without any discrimination based
on race, religion or geographical location. These professionals must lead awareness programs so
that people can consider mental illness as significant issue and does not neglect it. The must
make efforts so that with the support of state and government authorities they can make these
services accessible to every individual.
Furthermore, focus is on interaction between group and individual in which they fit with
social works. The main emphasis of social work practice is on developing the relationship
network among mental patients, families and natural support services (Mendenhall, De Silva and
Tomlinson, 2014).
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that social workers played significant roles in
mental health field. They have long and separate history of services to an individual with mental
issues and their families. Due to high degree of similarities among the conceptual framework as
mental health services are delivered and the value base and practice area of health care workers
which is anticipated that profession will play strong role in this field. It can be concluded from
the report that there is a great need for service providers in the area of mental illness. They can
coordinate with government agencies so that an awareness of mental health related facts can be
created. There is strict requirement of research in the practices and methods of these
professionals so that mentally ill people can also lead to healthy living with dignity and equality.
6

REFERENCES
Acharya, B., Maru, D.,. and Kohrt, B., 2017. Partnerships in mental healthcare service delivery
in low-resource settings: developing an innovative network in rural Nepal. Globalization
and health, 13(1), p.2.
Epstein, M.J., 2018. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring
corporate social, environmental and economic impacts. Routledge.
Goffman, E., 2017. Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates.
Routledge.
Green, A.E., Albanese, B.J., Shapiro, N.M. and Aarons, G.A., 2014. The roles of individual and
organizational factors in burnout among community-based mental health service
providers. Psychological services, 11(1), p.41.
Hepworth, D.H., Rooney, R.H., Rooney, G.D. and Strom-Gottfried, K., 2016. Empowerment
series: Direct social work practice: Theory and skills. Nelson Education.
Melton, G.B., Petrila, J., and Condie, L.O., 2017. Psychological evaluations for the courts: A
handbook for mental health professionals and lawyers. Guilford Publications.
Mendenhall, E., De Silva, M.J., and Tomlinson, M., 2014. Acceptability and feasibility of using
non-specialist health workers to deliver mental health care: stakeholder perceptions from
the PRIME district sites in Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa, and Uganda. Social
science & medicine, 118, pp.33-42.
Paudel, S., Gilles, N., and Katz, C., 2014. Impact of mental health training on village health
workers regarding clinical depression in rural India. Community mental health
journal, 50(4), pp.480-486.
Vandewalle, J., Debyser, B.,. and Verhaeghe, S., 2016. Peer workers’ perceptions and
experiences of barriers to implementation of peer worker roles in mental health services: A
literature review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 60, pp.234-250.
Wahlbeck, K., 2015. Public mental health: the time is ripe for translation of evidence into
practice. World Psychiatry, 14(1), pp.36-42.
Online
Why mental health services in England are finally receiving attention, 2017. [Online] Accessed
through <https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2017/oct/09/mental-health-
services-political-backing>
7

8