REPOSITIONING SOCIAL WORK TO IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH BY JIM MORTON, MSW, RSW, SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMITTEE CHAIR
COVID 19 shaped our experience during the past year. On the other hand, the pandemic has highlighted, underlined and amplified concerns about mental health. Governments and political parties at both federal and provincial levels have made commitments to increase investment and to give enhanced priority to the availability and delivery of mental health and addiction services.
I emphasize mental health because achieving optimum mental health in Nova Scotia has continued to focus the attention of our committee.
Certainly the highlight of our year was the launch of Repositioning Social Work Practice in Mental Health in Nova Scotia (nscsw.org/mental-health-paper). This report and the research it describes, commissioned by
18 Connection | Spring 2021
NSCSW, is the work of Dalhousie University School of Social Work professors Catrina Brown, Marjorie Johnstone and Nancy Ross. It makes 29 recommendations. These include increasing financial investment in mental health and addictions services, the importance of authentic community consultation, and rethinking the integration of mental health and addictions. The research in Repositioning also underlines the need for strengthening social work within the service delivery system, although, as the authors point out, “it is not social work that is limited, it is the neo-liberal, biomedical delivery approach itself.” Almost half of the report’s recommendations stress the importance of shifting to a bio-psycho-social model for delivering mental health and addictions services. A bio-psycho-social model recognizes individual humans as social beings, part of the systems in which we live. Social workers, the report argues, need to be better supported to help make this adjustment to a broader, more responsive service system.
