ABSTRACT
The social work profession has a dual mission: “to enhance human well being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (National Association of Social Workers (NASW), 2008). Individuals who struggle with ongoing mental health issues experience challenges in all spheres of functioning, on a daily basis. Daily life stressors and struggles can generate cumulative and chronic stress. In accordance with our profession’s mission, social work practitioners help clients to restore their optimal levels of overall functioning in various domains. Because a wide range of social and personal conditions and influences promote or mitigate mental health and illness, social workers must have a clear appreciation of the power of these social and personal conditions and influences. Social work practice theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the complex relationships between people and their environments and this represents one of the distinguishing features of our profession. One of the first ecologically based practice models, the Life Model of Social Work Practice (Germain & Gitterman, 1980) provides a theoretical and practice framework for understanding the transactional and bidirectional relationships between social and personal problems and mental health and illness. The model rests upon several key concepts, including the reciprocity of person-environment exchanges; adaptedness and adaptation; human habitat and niches; vulnerability, oppression and misuse of power; social and technological pollution; the life course conception of unique pathways in human development; the importance of considerations of historical, social and individual time; life stressors and related coping tasks; resilience; the interdependence of all phenomena and ecological feminism (Gitterman & Germain, 2008, pp. 1-2). These concepts are central to our understanding of the importance of a dual perspective when assessing individual and social vulnerabilities and resiliencies, while understanding the transactional effects of living in the world with a mental health condition.
