Social Work and Mental Health

Running head: SOCIAL WORK AND MENTAL HEALTH
Social Work and Mental Health
Name of the Student:

SOCIAL WORK AND MENTAL HEALTH1
Health has traditionally been defined as state that is devoid of any disease or ailment.
In recent times, this definition has been revised by World Health Organization or WHO. They
have defined health as a condition where a person has the ability to carry out all their social,
personal and professional works without any difficulty. It is the well-being, physiologically
and psychologically, of a person that gives a more holistic idea of his state. This evidently
leads to the idea of mental health. Mental health issues and illness are more common than it is
perceived. In most cases, they are not reported as there is social stigma attached to mental
illness (Bateman, Henderson & Kezelman, 2013). Thus, most patients do not get proper care
that is needed for their betterment. In this scenario, it is the responsibility of the social
workers and mental health professionals to provide that care and trust that will inspire more
patients to seek assistance. Moreover, ensuring justice and human rights are other issues that
are becoming important. In this learning statement, importance of mental health, features of
social work in ensuring mental health, the role of social workers in ensuring mental health,
well-being and mental illness, the ethics and values of social workers will be discussed.
Moreover, the socio-cultural barriers, personal challenges, practices by the social workers,
their constraints, and personal experience reflection will be discussed and analyzed to
understand the importance of social work in the sector of mental health improvement.
Many aspects like, cultural background, previous medical history and sentimental
aspects are there that the social workers have to consider before they approach any patient
that is suffering from any mental illness. Through the learning course about mental illness, I
came to know about the population approach that might be the key to manage health issues in
a population (Caplan, 2013). It identifies the different factors that might be the cause for
mental illness like, social, economic, cultural and environmental factors. In this approach,
these underlying factors that cause mental issues are addressed. The social workers here work
to build public policies that will ensure general health, creating strong community action and

SOCIAL WORK AND MENTAL HEALTH2
an environment that is supportive towards the mentally ill patients (Henderson et al., 2014).
During the initial phase of our learning I found out that the social model approach, that being
healthy does not only comprise of physical state of absence of illness rather it is a state that
has emotional, spiritual as well as cultural factors woven into it. Thus, social workers today
are adopting a Bio-Psycho-Socio model that enables them to incorporate all the factors as was
ethics of social work. As a social worker and learner of the service I believe that in Australia,
the cultural differences are extremely diverse (Bird et al., 2014). The aboriginals of the
Australia have a very different culture and belief system. Due to their exclusive character of
living, presence of mental illness was not noticed before (Gee et al., 2014). However, their
interaction with the outer world have increased in the past decade and the underlying
problems of mental issue are slowly surfacing. The mental health issue are born in them due
to societal and cultural reasons and its destruction due to colonization (Sveticic, Milner &
Leo, 2012). Their lack of interaction with the outer world had hidden the fact effectively
which now is becoming prominent as they are slowly connecting with mainstream activities.
The social workers, like me, have to ensure that the patients under my care, are
ensured their rights and justice. Thus, it is our duty to be aware of the health policies that are
there in State and Legislative. Queensland especially publishes legislation for social work
related to mental illness (Liu et al., 2017).
It is necessary for the social workers to understand the history of mental illness in
Australia to better address the problems and provide solutions based on this. People suffering
from mental illness were restrained and isolated from the society (Newman, Proctor &
Dudley, 2013). Mostly they did not receive any proper treatment. It slowly changed and
approach that is more humanitarian was given to mental illness. Later, laws were made to
protect the rights of the mental patients and trained caregiving was considered. This slow
growth has led to the present scenario where it has become a mainstream issue and thousands