March is National Social Work Month, and here at the Hogg Foundation, we see firsthand the major role social workers play in the upkeep of mental health.
We are joined today by Catherine Wilsnack, a doctoral candidate in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Catherine earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. Prior to pursuing social work, she worked as a mental health clinician. She discusses the unique perspective that social workers have on mental health and the collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners at the heart of the field.
Mental Health in a Border Town: It’s About Being Connected
“I always look at an individual and say, how can we improve this individual’s quality of life?” Richard Salcido says. “It doesn’t take money. It takes being connected to the community.” A shift in strategic focus to communities and collaboration is underway at the...
Deportation Anxiety for Today’s Young Adults
“DACA youth are in between worrying about their parents, worrying about themselves, and worrying about their little brothers and sisters,” says Dr. Luis Zayas. Congress is set to take action on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on March 5,...
Recovery at the Clubhouse
"A clubhouse is more than a place to be," Athena McClendon says. "It's a place to belong." Recovery has evolved from a buzzword into a useful framework for giving meaning to the experience of living with mental illness. Advocates of recovery-oriented principles aim to...
What is Mental Health Becoming?
"Mind is the thing that we are dealing with when we are dealing with psychiatric challenges," Ken Thompson says. "Mind is the thing in us that allows us to be both in the world and inside ourselves at the same time." No matter which way you look at it, mental health...
Mental Health in Schools
“Our hope is that this program will shift the culture,” Stephany Bryan says, “and it will definitely shift the culture in educational settings by being able to provide campuses with opportunities for learning new and innovative ways of providing appropriate services...
Integrated Health Care for Foster Youth
“What we set out to do was establish a system that would, in fact, cater to the needs of foster children in one place,” Jacquelyn McMillon says, “and that children did not have to go all over the city of Houston to get the most basic of care.” In 2015, the Texas...