Synergy: The Healing Energy Guiding Stepped Care 2.0 is a hybrid text that explores the theory and practice of synergy as it relates to the Stepped Care 2.0 (SC2.0) model for mental health care. Building on the previous volumes in this series, Stepped Care 2.0: A Paradigm Shift in Mental Health Care, and, Stepped Care 2.0: The Power of Conundrums, this third book consists of a series of essays on synergy, the philosophical idea undergirding SC2.0. Drawing on a wide range of tools from the social sciences and humanities, these essays build an argument for why a holistic and restorative approach to mental health care should incorporate synergistic perspectives and practices arising from global traditions of Indigenous psychology. By blending theory, storytelling, and academic analysis, this book provides an answer to the questions raised in the previous volumes. Using what the editors identify as the Strands of Synergy, it also offers guidance for practitioners seeking to incorporate synergy into their own practice, both in the context of the SC2.0 model, and in the clinical world more generally.
1. What is Synergy?.-
2. Synergy and the Conundrums of Stepped Care
2.0.-
3. Synergy and Institutions: Why is Synergy so Hard to Build?.-
4. The
Gaslighting of a Profession: DEI Training in the Mental Health Profession.-
5. A Journey of Discovery.-
6. The Education of a Healer: Recovering
Indigenous Practices of Synergistic Healing.-
7. Building Synergistic Systems
of Mental Healthcare.-
8. Building a Movement.- . Afterword.
Since developing the Stepped Care 2.0© (SC2.0) methodology, Peter Cornish has provided mental health system consultation and on-site implementation training to over 150 organizations across North and South America. In addition to his role as faculty and senior adviser at Stepped Care Solutions, Cornish is an honorary research professor at Memorial University and co-director of Student Mental Health (Strategic) at the University of California, Berkeley, where he established a mental health innovation incubator and research program in partnership with the Institute of Social and Business Impact at the Haas School of Business. He is a principal investigator for a $1.14 million Canadian Institutes of Health Research transitions-in-care, four-year research grant aimed at digitizing and evaluating SC2.0 across three Canadian provinces.
Dr. Gillian Berry has over forty years of social work experience as a practitioner, educator, consultant, and author. She obtained her Masters and Doctoral degrees from Birmingham University in England. She is currently a senior adviser at Stepped Care Solutions in Canada, a company focused on guiding the transformation of mental health systems to be more effective and restorative. She has previously taught at the University of Botswanas Department of Social Work Southern Africa and at the University of Maryland. Dr. Berry also previously worked as a director of a post-secondary college counselling center and in several Departments of Social Services as a clinical supervisor and facilitator, and is a trained mediator for the State of Maryland. She presents at conferences nationally and internationally on professional social work practice, public child welfare, culturally appropriate practice, and personal/self-improvement. She has published book chapters in edited books as well as published the empowerment novel, The Righteous Sin, and the childrens book I Am Everything.
