Neuroscience and Social Work Practice: The Missing Link

by Rosemary L. Farmer

Overview

Over the past 30 years, findings in the neurosciences have grown exponentially and have provided a profound understanding of the link between behavior and biology. Although the Social Work community has long taken pride in using a bio-psycho-social-spiritual (BPSS) framework in conceptualization and intervention, the biological aspect of this BPSS framework has been sorely missing. Neuroscience and Social Work Practice provides the critical missing link. Introducing the latest neuroscience research, it gives practitioners essential data—in an easily accessible form—with which to take on the challenges of increasingly complex human problems and diagnoses.

Key Features

• Takes readers on a "tour of the brain" and makes dense scientific material more engaging 
• Provides a framework for how human service professionals can understand and implement neuroscience clinical data with the use of the Transactional Model
• Uses case vignettes to explain how neuroscience findings have been applied to specific practice situations
• Offers a deeper understanding of the links between neuroscience research and social work in such areas as trauma, attachment, psychotherapy, substance abuse, and the effects of psychotropic medications

Intended Audience
This cutting-edge text is indispensable for practitioners in the human services field and is an essential supplement for upper-level undergraduate or graduate students of courses in Human Behavior in the Social Environment and Social Work Direct Practice as well as courses on Interpersonal Practice with Individuals, Children, and Families.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781483366289
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	12/17/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Rosemary Farmer is associate professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University from which she also earned her Ph.D. Her dissertation is entitled: Selected Effects of Underlying Neuropsychiatric Impairment on Adaptation of Persons with Schizophrenia to a Chronic Mental Illness. Within the Human Behavior in the Social Environment (HBSE) track, she teaches courses on HBSE; psychopharmacology; clinical experience; mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders, and family therapy. A prolific author, she has published numerous journal articles on psychopharmacology and neuroscience as they relate to clinical social work practice.

 

Table of Contents

1. Linking to the Neuroscientific Revolution
Linking
What′s Neuroscience, in a Nutshell?
Social Neuroscience
Book Contents
2. Tour of the Brain
Selected Characteristics
Selected Functions
Selected Geographical Features
3. Neuroscience as Link: Transactional Model
Overenthusiasm
Underenthusiasm
The Model
4. Linking to Social Work: Attaching and Bonding
Attachment Theory: Bowlby’s Missing Link
Bonding (and Oxytocin)
Understanding?
5. Linking to Social Work: Trauma
Increase Reliance on Science-Based Explanations
Incidence and Severity of Problems Linked to Trauma
Darryl: The Quest for Better Social Work Practice
A Neurodevelopmental View
A Multidimensional View
Advocating
Deeper Than It Need Be
6. Linking to Social Work: Psychotherapy
Understanding
Practice
Opportunities
7. Linking to Social Work: Psychotropic Medications and Drugs of Abuse
Psychotropic Medications That Help
Drugs That Hurt
Transactional Model Revisited
Clients’ Peril
Appendix: Teaching Suggestions
References
Index
About the Author