The Mental Health Support Workers Guide
My project for 2012 is a series of video presentations outlining many of the principles of social care work for people with mental health difficulties. This is because I feel very strongly that support workers in social care often find themselves effectively abandoned by over-stretched statutory services who are unable to provide the necessary input to help them fulfil their roles properly.
This is a great shame because many of the unsung support workers I come across are capable of extremely sophisticated work if only they had the necessary support. This free series is my attempt to redress the balance a little and ‘fill the gap’. To give you a 'small taster' the latest video instalment is already cued up for you to watch at the bottom of this page.
You can also listen to the series as it develops via The Care Guy podcast here
The project will be developed in instalments (roughly once a week) and is expected to take the whole of 2012 to complete. As each section is completed the listing below will become a link to the presentation itself. The different instalments will be:
- Introduction: What’s a support worker worth podcast, movie and transcript
- The biological (medical), social, and stress & vulnerability models podcast, movie and transcript
- The importance of physiology podcast, movie and transcript
- The meaning of psychiatric diagnoses podcast, movie and transcript
- Anxiety podcast, movie and transcript
- The psychology of anxiety podcast, movie and transcript
- Depression podcast, movie and transcript
- The psychology of depression podcast, movie and transcript
- Psychosis (Hallucinations) podcast, movie and transcript
- Psychosis (Delusions part 1) podcast, movie and transcript
- Psychosis (Delusions part 2) podcast, movie and transcript
- Psychosis (Thought disorders) podcast, movie and transcript
- The dementias podcast, movie and transcript
- Orientation and memory podcast, movie and transcript
- Delirium podcast, movie and transcript
- Working with the limbic system podcast, movie and transcript
- Personality disorder podcast, movie and transcript
- High Expressed Emotion (HEE) part 1 podcast, movie and transcript
- High Expressed Emotion (HEE) part 2 podcast, movie and transcript
- Sympathy is not usually helpful movie and transcript
- Stress & vulnerability movie and transcript
- The ‘invalidating environment’ movie and transcript
- Self fulfilling prophecy movie and transcript
- The meaning of recovery movie and trandscript
- The three types of recovery movie and transcript
- Duty of care: A slug in a bottle movie and transcript
- Hanged if you do & hanged if you don’t – a duty of care myth movie and transcript
- There is no ‘us and them’ movie and transcript
- People are just people movie and transcript
- People do the best they can with what they’ve got movie and transcript
- Coping skills develop slowly movie and transcript
- Do as I do – model behaviours we want to encourage in others movie and transcript
- Lapse and relapse – two different things movie and transcript
- Don’t expect your service user to perform perfectly. You don’t so why should they? movie and transcript
- Don’t blame people with disorders for behaving like people with disorders movie and transcript
- The word ‘support’ is meaningless in and of itself movie and transcript
- “It’s just behavioural” – a workers’ excuse for lazy thinking about service users’ needs movie and transcript
- Seek first to understand movie and transcript
- Nobody cares what we think so don’t moralise – give them evidence instead movie and transcript
- Everything we do teaches people about us and about the world movie and transcript
- Challenging behaviour means…. movie and transcript
- Different types of challenging behaviour movie and transcript
- Do we need help? movie and transcript
- Consequence, learned behaviour and the need for boundaries movie and transcript
- If you do the same things you get the same results movie and transcript
- In every interaction think – ‘what do I want to achieve by this?’ movie and transcript
- Any plan, however ill-conceived, is better than no plan at all movie and transcript
- The whole team approach movie and transcript
- Expectations movie and transcript
- Losing your temper doesn’t help movie and transcript
- Talk ‘one at a time’ movie and transcript
- Proximity anxiety movie and transcript
- Cognitive overload movie and transcript
- Don’t blame people with disorders for behaving like people with disorders movie and transcript
- Deliberate self harm movie and transcript
- Responding to a person who harms themselves movie and transcript
- It’s not about us movie and transcript
- Risk-free is impossible. Manageable risk is the way to go movie and transcript
- Don’t flap movie and transcript
- The saviour fantasy movie and transcript
- You’re probably not an emergency service – don’t try to behave like one movie and transcript
- Unhelpful thinking movie and transcript
- Socratic dialogue and ‘the razors’ movie and transcript
- Selective abstraction (the downward arrow) movie and transcript
- The sticks we use to beat ourselves movie and transcript
- Beat past trauma with new, positive memories movie and transcript
- Who put us in charge? movie and transcript
- The importance of mental capacity movie and transcript
- Rights, risks and limits to freedom movie and transcript
- Final thoughts movie and transcript
The guide: 'The meaning of diagnosis' movie