A man who hears voices and thinks he’s going to be kidnapped, another being detained under the mental health act, a diagnosis of depression and Alzheimer’s disease, a woman who wants to die, a man discharged from the mental health hospital. The Guardian has an Article that gives us insight to the week in a social workers life. Each day, Monday-Friday, people with these particular problems seek help from the social worker. Instead of the traditional kind of article, this article shows the week of a social worker through journals from her own perspective which include conversation and her thoughts. Through the perspective of the social worker and the situations she encounters we can see the theme that people aren’t always in a place where they can depend on themselves and have to look to seek help from others. In the article we see that these people go to a professional, their “other person”, in hope to improve their situation.
This article is viewed through the perspective of the social worker. From her journal entries we can see the emotion from her perspective. The article shows: “seeing someone so hopeless never fails to shake me, but I must stay calm”. The main point from this thought is that is “I must stay calm”. This shows that being calm themselves can be the best approach to help people stay calm. We know that the patient is not calm, for she wants to kill herself and states that she’s even researched how a few times. The article includes this to give the audience an example of a situation where the theme is truly shown, through the patient being almost hopeless and the last hope is the social worker. This point from the article further reveals the theme where people sometimes have to depend on others because they cannot remain, in this case, calm and need someone like a social worker to be calm for them because that’s the best approach.
On the optimistic side, the social worker writes “My last appointment of the week is a rewarding one: my final meeting with Michael” (The Guardian). This meeting is the social workers favorite because her work has really helped this man improve in his situation. “ He’s optimistic about his future and so am I. It’s moments like this that make it all worthwhile”(The Guardian). This shows the result of the social workers help after a long time of helping rebuild relationships for this man and so on. Including this in the article gives the readers a look at a real situation where the social worker has given her patients hope. We can see that when this man looked for help from her, his circumstances changed for the better, and he could not have done this alone.
The author uses life in the view of a social worker to show what her patients go through daily. She uses journals from a week in her life to communicate the theme through her encounters and the situations she is approached with. The theme is that people aren’t always in a place where they can depend on themselves, and have to look to seek help from others. The author gives examples from people with depression, thoughts of suicide, and diseases to further show the theme. They successfully communicated the theme. Yay, social workers!
Works Cited
McMahon, Benjamin. “'A Woman Wants to Die. As a Social Worker, I Help Her See That Life Matters'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2019, www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/15/woman-wants-die-social-worker-help-life-matters.
By: Britalit