ABSTRACT
Psychiatric social work, beginning as a new venture in both psychiatry and social work, has enjoyed the advantages and suffered the limitations of its dual situation. To psychiatry it could offer the encouragement to explore the significance of social relationships and conditions in the aetiology and treatment of mental illness; to social work in general it offered ideas of mental health and ‘the psychiatric point of view’. The special position of the psychiatric social worker in relation to the psychiatric services has had a number of important implications. The psychiatric social worker is created by the successful completion of a year’s training course, irrespective of the work subsequently undertaken. A consideration of supervision and, indeed, of professional education for social work reveal both the theoretical and practical contribution of psychiatric social workers to the development of a method of education and also to teaching in many fields other than psychiatric social work.
