Health pros, heed column’s advice

By Tim Welch, Henderson

Friday, May 20, 2016 | 2 a.m.

As a retired social worker who worked in the mental health care field for more than 40 years, I was very impressed with Kim Palchikoff’s recent guest column, “Entering the mental health care field? Here’s my advice.” In all respects, I found the advice offered by Palchikoff to be very insightful and right on. That her advice comes from someone who acknowledges having a mental health condition that has been treated makes her perspective all the more valid.

The advice she offered was sound, but I would make a few more suggestions: (1) Help clients understand that all experience can have a strengthening effect. It’s not experience that necessarily produces the desirable or undesirable effect, it’s what we choose to do with that experience. (2) There is a great benefit for anyone, especially for people with mental health challenges, to focus time and attention on the things for which they have good reason to be genuinely grateful. The benefits of “an attitude of gratitude” are inherently healing. (3) Forgiveness essentially always produces more positive beneficial mental health and relationship outcomes than a failure to forgive — whether it’s yourself or someone else that is the object of that forgiveness.

I sincerely hope all the psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, nurses and social workers graduating from UNLV, UNR and the University of Nevada School of Medicine have learned and will put into practice the very sage advice offered in this article.