| How can we teach the carers to actually care?

How can we teach the carers to actually care?

hooverhumper22 asked the question:


I am looking into methods involving theatre processes to train mental health support workers. There is an “old school” culture within the system (UK) which is a form of bullying. I believe it occurs as a result of workers not understanding the nature of empathy. My task is to facilitate the opening of closed minds. I am aware that this is a mammoth task, but if mental health stigma is to be eradicated, then it must be eradictated firstly with in the system which provides the care.
If anyone has any thoughts on this I would be glad to hear them.

If you would like to maintain correspondence, then get in touch by e-mail, I will be glad to hear all stories and opinions from either side of the fence which we are attempting to knock down.

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Comments

3 Responses to “How can we teach the carers to actually care?”

  1. MadforMAC on February 18th, 2009 12:47 am

    Being a teacher and a long-time volunteer, I don’t think you can “teach” empathy. It is definately something within the person. If they don’t have it…they don’t have it. Sadly.

    I feel any profession or volunteer work that requires empathy needs to choose it’s workers carefully. There are too many out there that are in care positions for the wrong reasons and those usually are the folks that do the most damage.

    Maybe by giving them a strong dose of their own medicine…bullying to the enth degree with a very large man with a very big voice in their face…would give them something to think about? I don’t know. You’ve stumped me.

  2. hallitubevolunteer1 on February 19th, 2009 5:57 am

    Caring is an emotional response, and these flatten out over time to the same stimulus. During their first days, they did care, but if you were for weeks in a region in Africa were hunger and disease is widespread, over time your charitable responses would be quenched. But you would be left with the stronger conviction that help is needed there. Health workers are more aware than the general public that the mental diseases and patient care are a problem, but our entire CNS is built to eventually ignore stimuli which re-occurr. There might be biochemical techniques of prolonging the response, but those would be unethical and not accepted by the caregivers. One solution would be on using very young people as caregivers.

    Unrelated: solve the commuting problem, google Hallitubes and tell your friends.

  3. hartshorntracy on February 21st, 2009 10:30 am

    i am a carer and i dont and didn’t need teaching,it came naturally