Should Social Workers be educated in Schizophrenia?
Should Social workers be educated on
Schizophrenia?
Dysfunctional is a term that was
previously used to describe families with a person who has Schizophrenia in the
1950’s and the 1960’s. (Walsh, 1988) New data from today’s research yields that
schizophrenia can be caused by heredity, prolonged drug use or extensive
traumatic experiences throughout one’s life. Scientists
believe that people with schizophrenia have an imbalance of the brain chemicals
or neurotransmitters: dopamine, glutamate, and serotonin. These
neurotransmitters allow nerve cells in the brain to send messages to each
other. (MHA)
Knowledge is available where access
is granted and this case, rural town America does not have access to the
different mental illnesses because those who possess them are deemed deviant
and dysfunctional. While people suffering with mental illness like
schizophrenia, they used to be locked away inside institutions, worsening their
condition. Social workers are getting more information on the different
illnesses associated with childhood trauma, war, divorces, death, birth and in
court settings but it is not fast enough to identify people who are ill and is
rapidly growing at a fast rate. Social workers are everywhere you look today, there
are advocates speaking to people in power about the onset of mental illnesses associated
with one’s life choices.
People today who may be less
affected by someone with schizophrenia are not well-educated on potential
triggers, medication, schizophrenic episodic events and or agree on whether
they should be integrated into the community where they would live a healthy
and productive life. Caretakers are usually family members who eventually
become resentful toward their loved one with schizophrenia. The care and
support the person needs is a great deal. It is a lot of reminders, grounding, reassurance,
productive hobbies, and activity. Families are not as knowledgeable through
experience and research on how to care for them and neither are Social Workers.
“Stay to the
right, you cannot survive on the left” God said.
“The white cars
are your angels; the red cars are angered by your actions.”
These are some
things said to a person who was having a schizophrenic episodic event in 2016.
As you can tell, God did not actually say these things. Delusions,
hallucinations, voices, and visual presentations played for personal viewing had
overtaken their mind, and surely, they felt so incredibly real.
Social workers should be
knowledgeable on the various types of mental illnesses so that they can determine
whether they should in fact take the person’s child(ren) or refer them to the
hospital and contact their next of kin. Social workers should accompany the
person instead of running through them as if they were on a conveyer belt.
Meeting the quota for the month should not constitute a way to take someone’s
child from them on the word of a stranger.
Social workers
have been dealing with personal interactions with people who have mental health
issues with little to no information on schizophrenia to help them better
understand what precisely they were up against. Today, they are more informed
in a variety of mental illnesses and even have information out for public
viewing.
How one perceives themselves is
important in self-discovery and along that journey, self-worth is examined. How
we see ourselves is the perception of the world we see around us. “Our identities are a repository for much of what we
absorb in the world and are the filter through which our lived
experience is processed and interpreted.” (Bransen, 2012)
If you go through life despising
the person who you have become, then you will struggle with identifying who you
are. A person with schizophrenia has a very difficult time identifying who they
are because of the delusions and hallucinations they experience. They go
through their day to day stuck inside of their mind, trying to combat the
chatter that echoes within.
Schizophrenia
affects approximately 24 million people or 1 in 300 people (0.32%)
worldwide.
(WHO) Social workers today are working on increasing the numbers of the number
of Social Workers there are in the field to accommodate for these numbers. After people begin realizing what it is that
social workers do, there should be a social worker assigned to every family to
help parents and family members cope with schizophrenia and other mental
illnesses. We as a collective are becoming more aware of what lies beneath the
surface. Everyone has a story, people have been traumatized and once we
recognize the damage families and the environment has on the affect of the
quality of life of a person, we will begin to heal through support services and
seminars.
Opposing this argument would entail
that social workers have no business telling families what to do or how to
raise their children, but as history proves to us, people have problems identifying
and accepting people as they are. Why have a stranger come into your home and
order you and your family around to accommodate said person with schizophrenia?
Well, the answer is simple, you see, these patients are human, people with
feelings and emotions and should be cared for properly by their loved ones. Schizophrenic
patients are not able to care for themselves so how can they care for children
or another person? With the right medication, lives of schizophrenic patients
have improved a great deal.
Supplemental
Paragraph:
I am writing for the first part of Unit
3. I wrote my social injustice, should social workers be educated on
schizophrenia to
match the style of The Western Journal.
To accomplish this, I used layout and word choice. I wrote my essay in smaller and shorter paragraphs rather than
larger and longer ones. I also included
numerous pictures throughout my paper. I
used word choices that pertained to a broad range of
audiences rather than one specific group
of people.
Work
Cited
Bransen, J. (2012).
The Importance of How We See Ourselves: Self-Identity and Responsible AgencyBy
Marina Oshana. Analysis, 72(1), 198–200. https://doi-org.proxy-bloomu.klnpa.org/10.1093/analys/anr147
Gaille, L. (2018). 15 Pros and Cons of being a Social
Worker. Vittana, https://vittana.org/15-pros-and-cons-of-being-a-social-worker
Mental Health America. (2022). https://www.mhanational.org/conditions/schizophrenia
Walsh, J. (1988).
Social Workers as Family Educators about Schizophrenia. Social Work, 33(2), 138–141. https://doi-org.proxy-bloomu.klnpa.org/10.1093/sw/33.2.138
World Health Organization. (2022). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/schizophrenia#:~:text=Schizophrenia%20affects%20approximately%2024%20million,300%20people%20(0.32%25)%20worldwide.
What is ascending order? Figure 3: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.splashlearn.com%2Fmath-vocabulary%2Fnumber-sense%2Fascending-order&psig=AOvVaw2pY6LzXxoRS7L34ZYgNDPA&ust=1650073379717000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=2ahUKEwifwL2--JT3AhX2gnIEHardClMQr4kDegUIARC_AQ
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