To make progress in life, maintaining a presence in mental health treatment is needed for many people. Personally, I know there are barriers to maintaining a presence in treatment. The goals of a practitioner and someone receiving treatment do not always coincide. It is interesting to determine at what point the purposes of the consumer and practitioner intersect. I know that treatment is beneficial in my life, but communication has become very difficult with service providers. For this reason, support needs to be established with common goals in a therapeutic alliance.
Goal setting in treatment may be one way to establish a common ground and language. However, varying temperaments in a therapeutic relationship will slow the road to meaningful therapeutic gains. There are inevitable conflicts, with baggage on both sides hindering real productive communication and goal setting. Ironically, sometimes it is the practitioner that carries more weight and credence to drive treatment forward. Objectivity is difficult whenever people and perception are involved, as everyone has the best idea.
All too often, treatment gets disrupted, many times, without warning and naturally throughout care. When progress and accurate work in treatment unravel, establishing or resetting a goal and kickstarting the momentum of the work is almost impossible without a social worker communicating the clinical play by play when cases have robust moving parts. When personal ambitions interfere with goals, it also may be challenging to maintain the ethical reins to keep treatment smoothly and without incident.
In fact, specific measures such as more extended unnecessary hospital stays could be avoided in some cases with better communication from the treatment team. Certain attitudes by social workers may exacerbate symptoms rather than give relief when a clinician takes cues from the wrong parties or isn’t truly engaged in their work enough to be a real changemaker and cheerleader in their client care.
All too often, patients are triggered by treatment providers without empathy. These feelings can lead to an ‘episode’ or the unraveling of a patient’s progress to date. Sometimes, these clinical missteps are so critical and negligent they make further treatment and additional clinical services necessary. With proper caution executed, and good listening with precise language, treatment progress can be maintained and preserved during touch-and-go blips that arise during care provision.
With a well-seasoned treatment team, enrollment and selection of programs and tandem services after discharge can be successful for many years. In the end, treatment at one level of care cannot go on or be maintained indefinitely. With time, everything changes, and someone may show the most signs of relapse when significant progress is being made.
For this reason, identifying valuable resources for patient education is critical for long-term progress after discharge and incredible natural support for patients to draw from when other artificial supports are inaccessible. Some supports need to be titrated down for the well-being of the consumer. When someone craves independence, but their goals are being withheld, severe conflict may worsen psychotic symptoms.
In cases of serious conflict, the proper change may be medication, but there may be more going on in the environment, or socially that can ease the episode. Changes in both may be needed, but good communication and appropriate support can certainly help to calm an attack.
In the end, the nature of life is dynamic, mental health treatment should be regarded as such. If life becomes stagnant due to failure to understand the needs of someone, symptoms can flare up. In worst-case scenarios, prison may be an outcome. However, communication and support are more attainable with grasping the history of someone. Responses will be more appropriate, and crises can be avoided with a reasonable, empathetic method of questioning.
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