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ScholarWorks > HHS > Social Work > JSSW > Vol. 51 > Iss. 1 (2024)

 

Abstract

In contemporary MSW programs in the United States, clinical and mental health coursework frequently centers evidence-based practices (EBPs), communicates and explains problems of living (“psychopathology”) through the narrow lens of the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and rarely provides students with a deeper critique of the recalcitrantly medicalized mainstream of psychiatric services and interventions. In spite of a rich history of ecological thinking in social work, these increasingly dominant approaches foreground diagnosis and biopsychological treatments, stripping experiences of distress and/or mental diversity of their sociocultural contexts and promoting practices that implicitly locate primary problems at the level of the individual. EBP discourse in particular invites students to understand “effective” intervention in ways that all too often subjugate and subordinate affect/intuition, embodied knowing, community and justice in the context of practice. This paper seeks to contribute to a growing body of discourse aimed at unsettling both the intellectual commitments EBP-driven frameworks entail and the implicit messages they send students about values and the nature of social justice. Specifically focusing on clinical and mental health social work pedagogy, we turn to critical disability studies (DisCrit) and mad studies to offer a critique of current practices and articulate an alternative teaching framework that emphasizes radical access, engaged relational pedagogy, and a politicized somatics.

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