Wanna grab some dinner? Social relations between helping professionals and members of community mental health or other human service organizations.

Abstract

Purpose: Could practitioners and members (consumers) of mental health or other organizations interact socially by regularly going out for drinks or dinner together, for example? The American Psychological Association explicitly states for example, "your psychologist shouldn't also be your friend." However such social interactions have occurred for decades in certain clubhouse-modeled community mental healthcare, and maybe research and a more balanced perspective is warranted.

Design/method: We interviewed six clubhouse staff that interact socially with members and held three focus groups with 20 members.

Results/conclusions: In relation to what we call a social interaction policy, we herein highlight: (a) four policy dimensions (e.g. activity types; relationship closeness); (b) a spectrum of policy challenges (e.g., dealing with romantic overture; feelings of exclusion or hurt and effects on mental health; symptom flare-up while out socializing; financial constraints of members such as dinner costs on limited incomes); and (c) a wide variety of policy benefits such as: (a) learning opportunities for members who can process with staff the ups and downs of social relationships; (b) social skill and network development; (c) enhanced assessment across different times/settings; (d) addressing stigma among staff who must grapple with internal resistance to spend free time with members; (e) enrichment of staff social life; (f) reducing internalized stigma among members when staff value them more holistically; and (g) empowerment of members when staff freely (and optionally) offer a valuable resource (spare time). We offer suggestions for certain types of agencies that may wish to implement social interaction policies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).