by Akari Takahashi
I submit this report in sincere appreciation to Hsun Kwei & Aiko Takizawa Chou and Friends of UTokyo for your generous financial support throughout the duration of my two-year Master of Social Work program at Columbia University. The experience of studying and growing here at the university for these past two years has been a life-changing one – one which I will hold close in my professional and personal life for years to come.
Throughout the last two years, I have been engaged in acquiring knowledge about the core skills, theories, and models that support effective interventions in social work practice. Out of the numerous interventions that I learned, DBT and MI influenced me most. DBT taught me how to balance acceptance and change in assisting clients in processing overwhelming emotions and acquiring effective coping mechanisms. I enjoyed its structured, skill-oriented methodology, particularly in the treatment of those going through complex emotional experiences. MI provided me with the skills of engaging clients where they were at – creating self-efficacy, cooperation, and intrinsic motivation in the face of ambivalence or resistance.
Being at Columbia also enabled me to explore the field of liberation psychology and understand the limitations of these clinical practices when they are applied in practice. The use of DBT and MI in our society has a tendency to individualize mental health problems in a way that ignores the political and economic conditions that shape the lives of people. Liberation psychology made me consider more reflectively the manner in which oppression gives rise to so much of people’s emotional and physical suffering. It reminded me that recovery from mental illness is not merely an individual but a political and social process – and that therapy must be situated within the frame of the broader struggle for justice.
My internship of two years was pivotal in putting theory into practice. My first-year internship involved me working as a school-based counselor at a middle school in Harlem. There, I conducted individual and group counseling with students who were struggling with a range of issues from academic pressure, interpersonal conflict, to emotion dysregulation. Through this, I sharpened my counseling competencies and heightened my knowledge in understanding how social factors influence youth development.
During my second year, I interned as a case worker for a non-profit that serves low-income, Japanese-speaking New York City residents. This internship experience was meaningful to me because it enabled me to apply my language skills to bridge cultural and systemic gaps. My work involved helping clients with applying to health insurance and public benefits, as well as gaining access to mental health services. I learned to practice in city and state-level social service systems and to establish rapport with clients isolated by cultural and language barriers. This enabled me to hone my case management skills and reaffirm my desire to work with immigrant communities.
I am pleased to report that I have recently passed the exam to become a Licensed Master Social Worker in New York. In the near future, I expect to keep adding supervised clinical hours towards the eventual attainment of Licensed Clinical Social Worker certification. I also plan to get formal training in DBT to enhance my therapy abilities. In the long run, I wish to return to Japan and be a therapist there. I am most interested in applying therapeutic modalities to fit a different culture and shaping interventions that fit both individual and broader social conditions.
I would like to thank Hsun Kwei & Aiko Takizawa Chou and Friends of UTokyo once again for their generosity. I am determined to pay your kindness back by continuing to serve people with compassion, integrity, and commitment to social justice.
