Helping Relationships in Mental Health

The focus of this text is on the skills of initiating, building and sustaining working relationships with people experiencing long-term mental health problems. It promotes the helping relationship as the central function on which the success of other service interventions is based. The helping relationship is examined from the perspectives of supportive, therapeutic and supervisory interactions, but also acknowledging the social context, user-empowering and socio-cultural influences on our interpersonal relationships. The overall approach adopts the strenghts' model of case management to the function of relationship-building, presenting a genuinely client-centred view of service provision. In addition, it is acknowledged that this difficult and emotionally demanding area of work requires specific attention to staff supervision. The use of case material serves both to illustrate the different aspects of relationship-building, but also as a definition of the many facets of long-term mental health problems.