Social Work Commons^™

Innovative Therapeutic Care For Homeless, Mentally Ill Clients: Intrapsychic Humanism In A Residential Setting, Katherine Tyson Mccrea, Emily Carroll

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

Residential care is increasingly recognized as an invaluable therapeutic resource for homeless, severely mentally ill, and substance-abusing clients. However, those managers and staff seeking to provide residential care can be perplexed by thecommunications of these clients and would benefit from a conceptual framework for planning psychosocial interventions to address these clients’ diverse problems. This paper describes how a comprehensive psychology-intrapsychic humanism-can be used as a flexible, consistent guide for serving this population in residential care. Based on a central principle that staff-client relationships can be a path to healing, intrapsychic humanism’s other precepts include treatment planning that recognizesclients’ conflicting motives …