Mental Health Special Interest Group (MH-SIG)

We are look forward to seeing you at the Mental Health Special Interest Group held within the ECSWR 2025 14th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE FOR SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH 12-14 March 2025 Katholische Stiftungshochschule München / GERMANY

Our Mental Health Special Interest Group meeting is held on Wednesday 12th March 2025 13:00 – 15:30 local time, Room TBC.

Provisional Outline

13:00 – 13:05 Kev Stone & Sarah Vicary - Introduction and welcome University of Warwick and Open University (UK)

13:05 – 13:25 – Families Supporting Families: User-centered co-design of a behavioral parent training intervention with caregiver support

Geetha Gopalan

School of Social Work at Hunter College-CUNY

In the United States, Black and Latinx youth residing in poverty-impacted communities have heightened risk for developing serious behavioral difficulties, yet are less likely than non-Hispanic Whites to access and maintain needed mental health treatment services, as a result of individual, interpersonal, and community-level factors of influence: perceptual (e.g., MH stigma, high stress) and family-level barriers (e.g., lack of transportation, childcare), system deficiencies (e.g., shortage of child MH providers), and culturally-specific factors (e.g., avoidance of MH settings). Effective treatments, such as behavioral parent training (BPT) programs, struggle with engagement and adherence among poverty-impacted families. Given that many families may avoid formal MH services entirely, increasing access requires nesting effective interventions to reduce youth behavioral difficulties within non-stigmatizing community-based settings and utilizing innovative strategies that both engage and empower families.  This presentation focuses on a project in development which will utilize user-centered co-design strategies to scale out an effective multiple family group BPT program so that it can be delivered by non-clinicians and outside formal MH clinic walls.  Additionally, the proposed project leverages the unique ability of Parent Peer Support Partners (PPSPs) to engage and support caregivers to optimally benefit from BPT strategies. This project is presented within the context of child-serving systems within the United States. Finally, open discussion with attendees will be facilitated to gather feedback and insights on co-design strategies, especially those that have been more widely utilized in Europe.

13:25 – 13:45 – The Decisions Taken by Unpaid Carers to Seek Mental Health-Related Care Services for Their Relative with Schizophrenia

Yu-Ching Liu

University of Bath, UK

Background: Two care systems, regulated separately under the Mental Health Act and the Long-Term Care Services Act, provide support for individuals with mental health problems to receive care within the community in Taiwan. The Mental Health Act incorporates a de-institutionalisation policy aimed at assisting individuals with mental health challenges in gradually adapting to social life. It emphasises rehabilitative treatments within the community, focusing on work-related abilities, work motivation, psychological reconstruction, social skills, and daily life management. In contrast, the Long-Term Care Services Act integrates "ageing-in-place" principles by providing personal care for individuals with long-term disabilities through a variety of home- and community-based institutional care options. 

Aim: This study aimed to explore the decision-making process regarding the utilisation of these two care systems from the perspective of carers.

Method: Qualitative interviews were conducted with thirty carers of individuals with schizophrenia, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Findings: Carers believed that a longing for existential meaning among people with schizophrenia and their own responsibility for sustainable caregiving were key factors prompting them to seek social care. While carers were likely to gather information about care services independently, their social networks played a significant role in introducing them to potential care services. However, carers were prevented from obtaining accurate information about social care by practitioners' limited capacity to recognise families' care needs. Although carers preferred to utilise care services regulated under the Mental Health Act to help recipients maintain their ability to live independently, they turned to care services under the Long-Term Care Act for supplemental support when care recipients' health deteriorated and when carers' capacity to care declined. Suspension of care services was sometimes triggered by unwillingness of care recipients to utilise such services.

Conclusion: This study highlights the complementary strengths of both care systems in addressing the specific needs of people with schizophrenia and supporting their consistent care within the community and at home. It is important to note that, although care services under the Long-Term Care Services Act help individuals with mental health problems to continuously integrate into community living, the potential suspension of these services could deprive carers of their right to receive support from social care. Recognising the conflict of interest that may arise between carers and care recipients during care planning is essential to maintaining carers’ well-being. 

Key words: Unpaid carer, long-term care, care service, mental health, schizophrenia, help-seeking

 13:45 – 14:05 – Paper 3 - Social work practice and the sociological imagination: can practitioners address the social determinants of mental health?

Robert Lomax

University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

Background and purpose

This paper will take as its main theme the importance of mental health social work maintaining its focus on the social determinants of mental health, and how the concept of ‘the sociological imagination’ can be a key factor in this. It draws on my research in England between 2022 and 2024 and considers the topic from the perspective of social work in multi-disciplinary teams.

The persistence of health inequalities in neoliberal states, and the retreat of comprehensive welfare provision, is a social justice issue at the centre of contemporary practice. My research explored how social workers understood the impact of the social determinants of mental health (SDMH) on the experiences of service users:

How do mental health social workers articulate a sociological imagination when considering the social determinants of mental health?

The study used C Wright Mill’s (1959) concept of the sociological imagination to explore participants’ ways of thinking about the factors that cause and maintain mental distress. The study was interested to know if working for a local authority influenced social workers’ ability to bring a broadly sociological perspective to their work. The study was also interested in the experiences of social workers employed as mental health practitioners; generic posts in the UK which can be undertaken by colleagues with nursing or occupational therapy qualifications.

Methods

Using a case study approach enabled detailed qualitative data collection. Twenty-one social workers participated in semi-structured interviews in which they also responded to the three textual vignettes. The paper will reflect on the difference in the mode of interviewing, and the use of vignettes as a method to elicit practitioner accounts of their work. Thematic data analysis was undertaken (Braun and Clarke 2006), and data themes identified. Theories by Friedson (2001) and Bourdieu (1977) were used, in addition to Mills’s (1959) sociological imagination, to structure data analysis.

Findings

Professional identity is influenced by social workers’ employment context.  Participants contribute a social perspective to multi-disciplinary team (MDT) working, and if they are employed by a local authority, knowledge of legislation and policy is also an area of self-identified expertise. Participants, responding to the vignettes, demonstrated the importance of ‘assessment through talk’ and three subsequent themes were identified: Imaging the experience; using knowledge of mental health, and reflecting on personal and practice experiences. Empathy and practice wisdom are important aspects of their practice too, which links to Fook’s (2019) suggestion that the sociological imagination can support a deeper critical reflection.

A Bourdieusian analysis, using the concepts of field, habitus and capital, in relation to MDT working, identified three themes: Power, collaboration and identity.

Conclusions and implications

This paper concludes that social workers do exercise a sociological imagination and also make a distinct contribution to MDT working. Drawing on Giles’s (2009) concept of a health equality imagination, this study suggests there is potential to develop an explicit mental health equality imagination. That is, practitioners consciously considering how to restore the link, between the profession’s core value of social justice and the current persistence of inequalities that are, in part, caused by the SDMH. Doing so, would support social workers to contribute a comprehensive sociological explanation about the impact of mental health inequalities to contemporary MDT practice.

14:05 – 14:25 – Exploring the relevance of ‘mercy bookings’ within contemporary neoliberal mental health practice.

Maxine Bell

Leeds Beckett University, UK

Background and purpose: The failure of deinstitutionalisation to provide adequate community support options has resulted in the relocation of madness at a street level and increased encounters between service users, social workers and the police. The concept of ‘mercy bookings’ (Lamb et al., 2002), has been historically used within policing to describe officers use of legal powers to offer ‘mercy’ by arresting people with mental health issues, in circumstances where there are no other support options available and to provide safety for such individuals. The current research considers, develops and applies the concept of mercy bookings to a mental health social work context, which provides suitable conditions for mercy bookings to be enacted. Situated on a backdrop of neoliberal reforms, this practice terrain is marred by a retrenchment of services, scarce resources and limited support options. The research examines how social workers utilise mercy bookings to manage service user care, treatment and liberty, as well as outlining the practice implications of such decisions. Methods: The research adopted an ethnographic approach to data collection, consisting of participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The data were collected over a 12-month period with 12 practitioners recruited who engaged in mental health street level social work and who were involved in decisions about service user care and treatment pathways. Data analysis was undertaken using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke 2022), which adopted a constructionist paradigm and a critical approach. Findings: Three main themes were generated from this process of data analysis; firstly, ‘mercy bookings and liminal spaces’, with practitioners considering mercy bookings as pragmatic solutions to navigate the neoliberal lacuna between the law and the resources required to successfully implement it. Secondly, ‘mercy bookings as responsibility aversity’, with practitioners recommending more restrictive options such as psychiatric hospital admission, which served as both a defensive practice and secondary risk management strategy and which offered a buffer from culpability and blame. The last theme, ‘mercy bookings as circumnavigation’ highlighted how mercy bookings were considered by practitioners as a work around to barriers to service provision. Conclusions and implications: The research examines the relevance of mercy bookings to street level mental health social work practice, highlighting that they are utilised as both a pragmatic response and last resort within a fractured mental health landscape. Whilst serving as a practical tool to navigate this challenging practice terrain, there are also implications and consequences for service user care, rights and liberty. The research highlights that within the current political and economic contexts of mental health, mercy bookings are both a consequence of and solution to mental health reforms under late neoliberalism. References: Braun, V. and Clarke, V (2022). Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London. Sage Lamb, H, Weinberger, L and DeCuir Jr, W. (2002). “The Police and Mental Health.” Psychiatric Services 53 (10): 1266–1271.

14:25 – 14:35 Break

14:35 – 14:55  – To be confirmed

14:55 – 15:00 Sarah Vicary & Kev Stone – UPDATE Social Work in Mental Health Settings Book UPDATE 

15:00 – 15:10 Development of the Mental Health SIG

15:10 – 15:30 Annual General Meeting

Convenors

Assoc. Prof. Dr Kevin Stone Kevin.Stone@warwick.ac.uk 

Prof. Dr Sarah Vicary sarah.vicary@open.ac.uk