Russell House Publishing Ltd

With mental health increasingly being recognised as crucial for a healthy and productive nation, and a vital component in the regeneration of communities, the current reality and future possibilities for social work in mental health service is vital.

This edition maintains the focus on the values that social work espouses as a profession, and its value in current mental health services. Chapters include social inclusion, personalisation, research, spirituality, the role of the social worker following mental health legislation in 2005 and 2007, and an overview of policy up to the current time. It:

• celebrates and promotes multi-disciplinary work and the integration of perspectives
• sets social work as a major contribution to a truly whole-person and whole-system approach to mental health
• values those who use mental health services as people with their own unique strengths, needs and experiences
• addresses issues of identity and equality
• provides clear theoretical frameworks for understanding barriers to developing those relationships that enable social workers to recognise the capabilities of service-users
• discuss the merits of different models for understanding and working with mental or emotional distress
• uses research and ideas drawn from sociology, psychiatry and psychology and even economics to emphasise how social work is able to utilise the best of everything that is available for services users' and carers' benefit

It will boost the confidence of social workers by reinforcing the tremendous resource that they are to people in the greatest need in our society, and will help partner professions and agencies value the contribution that social work can bring.