The Impact of Mental Disorder

Abstract

In our first chapter we have examined briefly the traditional model of mental illness and reviewed some of the challenges to it. We indicated that whilst the social worker might find some of the alternatives that we described attractive, in order to communicate with colleagues such as psychiatrists, nurses and psychologists, familiarity with the language and concepts of the medical model is necessary. However, the social worker’s focus is essentially different from that of colleagues and it is specifically the social work view of problems that we wish to examine in this chapter and the next. For the social worker the niceties of diagnosis are less important than the client’s present functioning and the impact that has upon the individual, the individual’s family and their wider social circle.