Creative Solutions and Development for Social Workers Treating People with Serious Mental Illness - Contributions from Supervision

Abstract

Social workers who are engaged in a therapeutic work with clients who have serious mental illness often face specific challenges and find themselves in crisis states in therapy, which stem from the return of the clients’ symptoms and their cognitive impairments as well as social stigma. These crisis states cause dramatic changes in the way social workers mentalize their clients and they are propelled to draw from covert, unformulated, and dissociated knowledge that they have about the client’s experience, which contributes to achieving new, surprising, and creative ways to mentalize the client. Such crisis resolutions enhance therapists’ personal and professional development and serve as an identification model for their clients.

Keywords:

• unformulated knowledge
• serious mental illness
• supervision
• mentalization

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hanoch Yerushalmi

Hanoch Yerushalmi, Ph.D., Department of Community Mental Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. [email: [email protected]]