This is not a question...
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paper1.docxRUNNING HEAD: INTEGRATIVE PAPER
INTEGRATIVE PAPER
Life Help Mental Help
Teresa Busby
Mississippi Valley State University
Integration Seminar—SW 437
Mrs. Sowitza Johnson
October 29, 2018
Introduction
Field Instructor: Mrs. Ruthie Collins is an (PSR) Supervisor at Life Help Mental Health in Indianola, MS. She holds an associate of General Education, she have Bachelor of Social Work degree and she also have her Master in Counsel Psychology. As an supervisor at Life Help Mental Health, Mrs. Collins is expected to teach the clients about issues they face on a daily basis. She provides individual and group counseling, helping her clients with self-esteem issues. Mrs. Collins is also being trained in crisis evaluation, assessments, management recovery, and interventions. Mrs.Collins have been a school counseling for almost 3 yesrs. She started out at Life Help as a Community System Support for 2 years and got promoted to PSR Supervisor, she been with the company for 7 years.
Life Help is a public, not for profit agency that provides a wide range of behavioral health services to individuals in Attala, Bolivar, Carroll, Grenada, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Leflore, Montgomery, Sharkey, Sunflower, and Washington Counties.
Our mission is to help clients and families build a bridge from Life’s challenges and difficulties to stability and recovery. The mission of Life Help Mental Help is “to encourage, engage, and equip others to believe in the possibilities. To positively impact the life of every person I meet. To encourage everyone on a daily basis. And of course, my personal mission statement, ‘To help others live the lives they would if they only knew how.”
The purpose of this paper is to give the reader a glimpse into the daily life of a social worker. The title of social worker is not one to be taken lightly. The purpose of this paper is to also allow the reader to explore the happenings at a rural facility whose sole purpose is to help those that deal with issues ranging from alcoholism to mental disturbances. This paper is designed to show how the social worker is able to integrate what they learned into the classroom into their daily integration seminar, and hopefully one day, their regular nine-to-five job. Having seminars such as these may prove to be beneficial for social work students in the long run. Lastly, the purpose of this paper is to show how social workers help people in their daily lives, and why interventions are important in the social work industry.
Client System
The social worker does practice at Life Help Mental Health, a local agency with offices spread across the Mississippi Delta. The client to which the social worker is assigned is a 62-year-old white male. The client was referred to the agency by a friend of his estranged wife. After much hesitation at first, the client began to open up. He revealed that he dropped out of school in the tenth grade. He comes from a Baptist background but does not go to church on a regular basis. He once worked at a local auto and body shop but lost his job because of alcoholism and his quick temper.
The client is in fair but rapidly declining physical health. He and his wife were married for nearly 30 years and have three children—two adults and one teenager—together, but she decided to leave him after he became physically and verbally abusive. The client finally agreed to receive help from our agency a referral by his wife’s friend, who also received help.
Human Behavior and the Social Environment
In their practice situation with the client, one of the human behavior theories that the social worker felt were the most relevant to this case was the family systems theory. Family systems theory is defined as Given that the subject was married to his wife for nearly 30 years and had three children, his alcoholism, abuse of the wife, and mental illness began to take an effect on the family. The family systems theory, as described by Murray Bowen, assumes that humans are products of evolution and are related to all of life. Bowen’s theory consists of six main concepts: the differentiation of self-scale, triangles, nuclear family emotional process, family projection process, multigenerational transmission process, and sibling position. (Papero, 2015)
The social worker’s rationale behind choosing this particular theory for the practice assignment was due to the realization that the family unit is the most important for human development and interaction. With this particular family, the husband was estranged from the wife, and therefore was unable to see the teenaged child. They have two adult children who no longer live in the home. In spite of this, the entire family has been affected by the client’s alcoholism, abusive behavior, and mental illness. According to Bowen (Titelman, 2014), problems will not arise from a person’s intrapsychic conflicts (their head). Instead, the breakdown occurs from within the family nucleus and most often, at the head of the home, which is with the husband and wife.
The next theory that was chosen was behaviorism, which seeks to explain human behavior by analyzing the consequences that exists in a person’s environment and the associations that the person has acquired through previous experience (Angell, 2013). In choosing the behavioral theory, the social worker had to get a gauge on the client’s behavior. With the help of the agency, the social worker found out that the client turned to alcohol due to stress on the job, which he no longer has. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a medical professional, which also contributed to his behavior. When asked why he felt like he could talk to the agency and not his family about his situation, the client stated that he felt like the agency “understood” where he came from. The social worker chose the behaviorism theory because it relates the most to the practicum. The case in which the social worker is involved deals directly with behaviorism, which offers an approach to direct practice that focuses on observable, and concrete behaviors as opposed to internal mental processes. Behavior theory is focused on stimulus-response issues, empirical research, and observing human action (Walsh, 2014).
Social Policy
While reviewing the case, the social worker was made aware that the client at Life Help had several violent run-ins with his longtime wife. Due to his incessant drinking, coupled with his erratic temper and mental illness, the client would sometimes have altercations with the wife, which led to him being arrested on a couple of occasions. The client did express remorse for hurting his wife, but only after the wife left with their teenage child. When asked if he had hurt the child or his other children in any way, the client gave a negative response. However, he did admit to yelling at them a few times.
The Mississippi Department of Mental Health states a clear policy, which says that even though great strides have been made, their agency continues to improve its mental health system with new and improved services. DMH wants its clients to have a hands-on approach in helping design its services. DMH seeks to decrease the stigma surrounding mental illness, intellectual/developmental disabilities, substance use disorders and dementia. This agency continuously strives to improve in the areas of research, outcome measures, and technology in an effort to enhance prevention, care, services and supports. Lastly, DMH is actively forging partnerships across the state of Mississippi to provide services all over. (Mississippi Department of Mental Health, 2018)
This social policy applies to the practice situation because the client is dealing with a severe mental issue that may be altering his thinking processes. He may or may not fully be aware of what he is doing when he hits his wife or argues with his children, and the alcohol makes it no better. The agency is implementing interventions to help with the situation. The agency has made several resources available to help the client, such as rehabilitation services, therapy sessions, one-on-one counseling, and crisis interventions. At first, the client was hesitant and even resistant to receiving aid from Life Help, but then he realized that he wanted nothing more than to repair his family and his life. He agreed to come to Life Help turn his life and his situation around, and to get better physically and mentally.
Practice
Micro Theory
In social work practice, micro social work deals directly with individuals, couples, and families (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney, & Strom-Gottfried, 2017). This practice is also known as direct practice or interpersonal practice, which focuses on individuals and their environments—their families, peer groups and other social relationships. These environments may also expand to schools, workplaces, and other settings. (Seabury, Seabury. & Garvin, 2011). The social worker must always remember that it is important to understand the interpersonal relationships with clients and those who surround them.
Macro Theories
Social work at the macro level deals with help individuals and group solve issue and create social change on a social, community, organizational, societal, and global level (Bruggerman, 2013). On the macro level, the intern’s work at Life Help was a prime example of how the client received help. Life Help is not just considered to be an agency for people with mental health issues, it is a community service agency where people can come for any need they may have.
Research and Evaluation
Research is a key component of social work practice. Research plays a big part in many aspects of social work such as theory, social policy, and legislation. Many people outside of the world of social work may not realize that much of social work practice is evidence-based, and in order to get evidence, practitioners must do lots of research (Webber, 2015). In order to get a good grasp on the client, the intern did research with the client’s family to see what kind of person he was and to see how long he had been having his issues. No one was really willing to talk except for his wife and a cousin, who revealed that the client displayed mental issues growing up as a child. When the intern asked the client about his childhood during an intervention session, he was reluctant to open up, but he did eventually say that he was bullied when he was younger.
Social and Economic Justice
The individuals in this particular case scenario were faced with a multitude of social and economic justice issues. The client’s wife, in particular, being a female, had to deal with the issue of being a domestic violence victim. She was finding it difficult to get help but eventually found the help she needed from a local church after leaving her husband, the client. The family, as a whole, had to deal with the issue of poverty. They were already a low-income family, but the client lost his job after being arrested for his domestic violence incident and the wife was working a minimum wage job, which was barely enough to support the family. They were faced now with the possibility of having to go on welfare, but the client did not want that for his family. There is also the issue of child welfare. The couple has a 13-year-old daughter who is dealing with self-esteem and other issues, on top of going from school to school. The client says the staff of Life Help have been wonderful in trying to help him get back to his family and overcome these issues, which he feels has been empowering.
Diversity
The client is an older white male. He has been married for 26 years, has three children, comes from a Christian background. He comes from a low-income household and relies on the assistance of Medicaid and family members to pay for medical bills and his visits to Life Help. Although he came from a good family, he did reveal that he had a history of bullying, that may have led to his mental illness. It is unknown if any other family members have a mental illness.
As it relates to this case and any other case, diversity is an important factor in the practice of social work, because clients will not only come from all sorts of different races, ages, and genders, but socioeconomic statuses, cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds, familial structures, and other unique situations. The cornerstone of social work practice is respecting those that come from different backgrounds and societies than we do, treating them with respect, and providing them with equal opportunities (Gast, Patmore, 2012).
Those practicing social work must never look at diversity as an “us-and-them” situation, for it goes against the very commitment of social work’s commitment to helping everyone in need. This contrary view also causes division, marginalization, and is prejudicial to say the least. The “us-and-them” view casts social workers in a very bad light and may cause clients to see them as incapable of solving their problems. This perspective may even bring threats or being wary of trusting social workers (Rosenberger, 2014).
Ethics and Values
There are several values highlighted within the NASW Code of Ethics that applies to the social worker’s case. The first value is service, and the ethical principle is helping people in need and addressing social problems. The intern was asked to help a client that was in need of help because he was battling alcoholism and mental illness. The intern relied on their own values and adhered to NASW-COE as well Life Help’s policies to intervene with the client, making sure that he had access to all of the right sources and was led down the right path. The next value was the dignity and the worth of the person. NASW-COE standard is for social workers to treat their clients in a respectful manner and keep their cultural and socioeconomic differences in mind. Social workers have a responsibility to their clients as well as to society as a whole. The NASW-COE also values the importance of human relationships. One of the client’s main reasons for coming to Life Help was to repair the relationship with his family. Social workers are well aware that person-to-person relationships spur change and one of their jobs is to help strengthen the relationships of their clients and other people (National Association of Social Workers, 2018).
Conclusion
The most significant learning experience for the intern in this experience was getting to know other people and not pre-judging them because they come from different backgrounds. One may never know what a person is going through unless a person just gets to know them, and this is especially true in the world of social work. The intern had an eye-opening experience with the client, who is now progressing and trying to do better for himself. Agencies like Life Help are there to not only help people, but save lives. The experience at Life Help has caused this intern to be a better thinker, researcher, and observer. Most importantly, professional and personal skills have been strengthened, which will only make a better social worker in the future.
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Mississippi Department of Mental Health. (2018) Progress Update on Mississippi’s Public Health System. www.dmh.ms.gov.
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