ABSTRACT
THE history of the profession is not easy to summarize, but it is basically concerned with the interplay between changing definititions of psychiatric social work and wider social forces. The definitions in question are sometimes those assumed or propounded by the workers themselves; at one time or another they have seen their work as a special kind of therapy (therapeutic social work), as social work carried out in conjunction with psychiatry, or as social work which carries a particular responsibility for stimulating ‘teamwork’ on the problems of the mentally ill. Definitions have also been attempted by those outside the profession, and these have reacted upon those made by psychiatric social workers. The medical profession, for example, at one time wished to define such workers as medical auxiliaries, and the Board of Control emphasized in its Reports in the 1930’s the extent to which they could save the doctor’s time by doing what perhaps he could have done himself in happier circumstances. The various views of psychiatric social work have interacted with each other, and with some of the important changes in the thirty or so years of the profession’s existence. Of particular importance to the development of psychiatric social work, as we have seen, have been the social experiments during the Second World War and the extension of the social services, especially for mental and physical health, in the years after.
