5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This session will explore a range of sociological perspectives on mental health social work. Social workers are involved in mental health services in varying statutory and community roles globally and this session will consider the ways in which the skills and values of the profession are understood and utilised in national and international contexts. Related to this are matters of interprofessional power and interactions, biomedical dominance within mental health services, and service user engagement and empowerment. Social work is a global profession committed to social justice, human rights, and collective responsibility (International Federation of Social Workers, 2014). As such, the ways in which mental health is understood and engaged with by social workers inevitably aligns the profession with sociological understandings of health, justice, power, and professional identity.

This session will bring together papers that explore these issues, contributing to critical understandings of both social work and mental health.

The session welcomes a range of paper formats. Papers focussing on specific national contexts and practice settings will be considered, as will papers that have an international focus. Moreover, theoretical papers and literature reviews that have a sociological focus will also be considered.