A longstanding and slightly comical criticism of social work is that it is wooly. At times it can appear unclear and unfocused, in others it is all encompassing but overtly soft in nature – the rub being that social workers sometimes struggle to successfully address and countenance issues of harm, because we are often trying too hard to be nice. Continue reading
A quick search of ‘Mental Health Stigma‘ illustrates that it has been publicized back into the 1980s – so why does it still seem like an emerging topic, and where are we going wrong? Continue reading
Media outlets (reporting news or social broadcasts) are dominated by stories relating to otherness; whether it be racism, war, misogyny, mass shooting, political divides, or social justice issues — the action/inaction dynamic of such reporting — being that a story dominates the news cycle then fades — appears like an off-beat pendulum of a clock that will never truly tell us what time it is. The times are changing, they are always in flux, but we might not see a true advancement of that change-potential unless we consider how the psychology of dehumanizing our fellows may just keep us stagnant. Continue reading
I was recently made aware of this ‘article’ appearing in various forms through social media – now I say ‘article’ because I am generously applying the term to what should be referred to as propaganda. The issue of mental health policy has been in the forefront of minds recently – bombastic reporting, social media mobbing, and good ol’ stigma come in droves when tragedy strikes. That specific issue is so emotionally entrenched that I almost dare not address it, but I do feel it is connected to this post – in the same way that social media drove the anti-vaccination issue, and the autism-misinformation ‘debate’. I am of the opinion that articles like the above trend because sections of the populous are attempting to find meaning, and even fault, within a system they do not understand.
That makes such things even more dangerous, because they are disingenuous at their core, and I’m going to tell you why. Continue reading