Teaching Mental Health Social Work: What Are We Preparing Students for?

The Australian social work course accreditation standards aim to ensure graduates have an understanding of the social, cultural, and political structures that influence psychosocial wellbeing. Unlike the previous standards, the current standards do not require the curricula to address specific knowledge and skills for working with people who live with severe mental distress or mental health conditions that might result in diagnoses such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, and bipolar disorder. Anticipating the revision of curricula resulting from these recent changes to the accreditation standards, four social work academics from across three Australian universities engaged in a peer review of mental health social work curricula. By exploring the purpose, emphasis, and challenges in curriculum design, this stage of the review aimed to identify the positioning of future curricula to prepare graduates who embrace the complex array of opportunities and demands of social work practice in this field. Our investigations confirmed diversity in mental health social work practice, revealing mental health social work curricula must meet multiple and evolving agendas. IMPLICATIONS International calls for transformative approaches to mental health present opportunities for enhanced recognition of the social justice orientation of social work. The absence of an accreditation requirement to address social work practice with people who live with severe mental distress or low prevalence mental health conditions might prove a regrettable gap in Australian Social Work Education Accreditation Standards 2021. Further collegial discussion and debate about the beneficial outcomes of mental health social work curricula are desirable.