Community is something that I valued deeply as a mental health professional. It is my belief that everyone needs to belong to some type of community. I am fortunate that I belonged to many communitys in my professional, and personal life. I would like to talk to you about a community that I have been adopted into.
One of my favorite places to eat is a place called Tarek's Cafe. Tarek's Cafe is the community that has adopted me. It is the only family owned and operated eating establishment on the University of South Florida campus. It is run by Tarek, Jefl, Kristen, and jenfer . They have been on the USF campus since 1993. They have the absolute best food on campus. The food is very good, but that is not why I keep coming back. It has been because of the relationships that I have established with them. I have a very close relationship with them. It is a good place to go and talk about, baseball, and football. It is a great place to go and talk about the news of the day. There is also a great place to catch up with people. They have also taught me a great deal about how to take care of all types of people. They always try to take care of people. If someone, has forgotten money, they say give us the money tomorrow. If you have a meeting for 15 people, and you forgot to call they normally can accommodate you. Everything they tried to do is based on social capital. Relationship that they have established with people, is how they get stuff done. If they don't know you, they would try to help you out. The community that has been established with this group of people is a really unique relationship that I have had the privilege of being a part of.
So how does this relate to counseling profession? As I stated at the beginning, community is something that I deeply value not only in my professional, but my personal life. The work that we do as mental health professionals, is at times very stressful. We need to have a community of people, willing to back us up. Willing to share food with us. Willing to be in relationship with us. This is something that is very important to all of us. We also need to recognize, that client is that we provide treatment to may not have community, or social capital like I described above. We must be willing to help to empower our clients to seek out community like Tarek's Cafe. This is something that I will go into in a future blog. Don't lose touch with people. Establish relationships with all types of people. Be willing to seek out community. Community is life changing to people. With community, come this concept of social capital. Community is important to all. Seek it out.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Self advocacy, hope, and the mental health profession
Let's say that you are working in a community mental health center. Let's say that you have a client that has a mental health diagnoses. Let's say that you are a new treatment provider, because his old one lost his job because of gross incompetence. You discover that the treatment provider has not met with the client in the past three months. What in the hell do you do?
Let me state that this is a hypothetical case. I am using this case to talk about the importance of teaching our clients self advocacy skills. Especially a client's in a community mental health environment. I can use this case study to talk about the ethics of the profession. I am not going to do that. I have studied self advocacy theory for a very long time. Self advocacy in a nutshell is about expressing choices that affect your own life. It is also about standing up for your rights. It is also about taking control over your own life. Self advocacy is something that is extremely important to me. I also believe that as ethical professionals we must empower clients to get some level of control over their own lives. Often times people in the community mental health environment are treated as less than. Is this right? No. This is why I have a love-hate relationship with community mental health. Some organizations client get lost in. This is live self advocacy skills are very important. If we teach our clients to advocate for themselves, then when something goes wrong they client will be able to express what they need.
Is this complicated in a community mental health environment, absolutely. Some people could argue that some people have a severe mental illness that prevents them from advocating for themselves. In my response to this, I say severe mental illness is about recovery. With treatment people will improve the quality of their lives. They might have times where they are in crisis, and needing to get stabilized back on the road to recovery. Self advocacy is a tool to empower our clients to some level of control over their lives. I argue that if we teach self advocacy, clients will be able to stay in recovery. We need to give people are hope, that life will get better. Hope is a valuable commodity, that must be giving freely to all people.
Let me state that this is a hypothetical case. I am using this case to talk about the importance of teaching our clients self advocacy skills. Especially a client's in a community mental health environment. I can use this case study to talk about the ethics of the profession. I am not going to do that. I have studied self advocacy theory for a very long time. Self advocacy in a nutshell is about expressing choices that affect your own life. It is also about standing up for your rights. It is also about taking control over your own life. Self advocacy is something that is extremely important to me. I also believe that as ethical professionals we must empower clients to get some level of control over their own lives. Often times people in the community mental health environment are treated as less than. Is this right? No. This is why I have a love-hate relationship with community mental health. Some organizations client get lost in. This is live self advocacy skills are very important. If we teach our clients to advocate for themselves, then when something goes wrong they client will be able to express what they need.
Is this complicated in a community mental health environment, absolutely. Some people could argue that some people have a severe mental illness that prevents them from advocating for themselves. In my response to this, I say severe mental illness is about recovery. With treatment people will improve the quality of their lives. They might have times where they are in crisis, and needing to get stabilized back on the road to recovery. Self advocacy is a tool to empower our clients to some level of control over their lives. I argue that if we teach self advocacy, clients will be able to stay in recovery. We need to give people are hope, that life will get better. Hope is a valuable commodity, that must be giving freely to all people.
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