Are the rights of people with mental illness still important?
Social Work › Vol. 39 Nbr. 2, March 1994
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Are the rights of people with mental illness still important?
As the social work profession grapples with the problems of the 1990s, the social climate of the preceding decade seems to have lost its relevance, and people have moved on to new and pressing issues. But have the 1980s passed without leaving any permanent effect? If the 1980s, as it appears in retrospect, was a period of renewed focus on individualism, traditionalism, religious conservatism, and laissez-faire economics, the logical corollary is that social justice concerns decreased in importance (Reeser & Epstein, 1987; Stewart, 1981). Certainly issues such as affirmative action, civil rights, nondiscrimination, and the protection of disadvantaged subgroups in society received less attention, and less value was placed on such goals (duRivage, 1985; Wilk, 1988).
Social work not only is embedded in a given society and culture, but has traditionally been very sensitive to the values, attitudes, and political beliefs of the society in which it functions. Social work may not be in agreement with society's dominant values, but it cannot help but be aware of them. Indeed, how services are designed and presented very likely represents prevailing social values. Attitudes of social workers toward a particularly disenfranchised population such as psychiatric patients might be seen as a reflection, albeit a narrowly focused one, of an overall value stance. The question this study attempted to answer is, How do clin...See the full content of this document
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