Social Work Mental Health Issues Essay

National Association of Social Workers (NASW, 2017), the majority -- 60% -- of mental health services in the United States is provided by social workers. Psychologists provide only 23% of the country's mental health services (NASW, 2017). Social workers have the greatest responsibilities for patient advocacy in mental health and have the ability to influence mental health public policy. The best way to advocate on behalf of clients in the social work sector is to improve personal and professional competencies by staying aware of the emerging issues in both social work and mental health care. Current emerging issues including working with an increasingly diverse client base, not just in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of needs diversity, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation diversity, diversity of socio-economic status, and other issues that require a personalized plan of care (Marsella, 2011). Another emerging issue globally is recognition of the need to link mental health care and social work with the immediate recovery needs for specific target populations; those recovery needs often include employment training and/or coaching and also education and personal development (Shankar, Martin & McDonald, 2009). Providing holistic attention for clients, taking into account higher needs like finding meaning and purpose in life might also become a more pressing concern for social workers in the future.

To ensure that clients and target populations receive necessary mental health services, it is important to focus on outreach, advocacy, and public awareness. Often this includes partnering with government, community organizations, and private healthcare institutions to provide promotional materials or suggestions for marketing mental health services in ways that are more appropriate, that target the specific communities and are therefore more efficient and effective. Another way of ensuring target populations receive necessary mental health services is by advocating on behalf of clients via fundraising efforts, which can also be done through grants and other public funding or through the private sector. Social workers can also perform direct outreach by educating clients about services that are available, and by remaining on top of the emerging trends in treatment in mental health.

Social workers always have an ethical responsibility to inform patients but also to inform local healthcare organizations and social service institutions that are not doing a good enough job of patient outreach and advocacy. Other ethical priorities of social workers who work in the mental health field include ensuring client confidentiality and…