Neuroplasticity - a perspective for your consideration

MedicineNet.com defines Neuroplasticity as follows: The brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment (MedicineNet.com, 2004).
I remember as early as grade school being told that many of the cells in the body can reproduce themselves to a certain extent but one of the types of cells that can never be replaced are the brain cells. One of the arguments against drinking alcohol is that it kills brain cells and “. . . as we all know, once brain cells are lost they are gone forever”. Counter arguments to alcohol consumption replied that we have so many brain cells that losing a few doesn’t hurt anything. Just keep drug/alcohol use to a “reasonable” level and there will be no problems. Miracles would occur where a stroke victim would gain functions lost as a result of the stroke but that couldn’t be counted on. The general belief was that sometimes other parts of the brain adapted themselves to take over functions of damaged cells – but it was rare and nothing you could depend on.
I find that one of odd things that happened as a child (as well as an adult for that matter) it that I would hear things I didn’t believe but shrug my shoulders and say to myself “well science proves x, y, or z so my disbelief must be wrong”. Then years, often decades, go by and it turns out my disbelief is the truth. As far back as I can remember I have known that people can change based on what they think. Based on my experience with others and myself, I have known that new neuropathways can be created to replace old ones, to reroute lost or damaged cells, or entirely new neuropathways created to perform new and different functions. In my work with people living with a drug/alcohol disorder(s) I have witnessed many transformations of people’s lives. In my work with mentally disordered adults I have seen people think about their disability differently and slowly transform their “disability” into an asset. Both the mental health and drug and alcohol recovery model is based on changing how people think about their “disease”. The number of people improving their lives using this model is extensive.
So do I believe in Neuroplasticity? I have always believed people can change by changing how they think whether science supports it or not. When I was a child, science said it happened only on rare occasions under unusual circumstances. Now a whole group of scientists say we can affect the change ourselves through visualization and other mental applications. Nothing has changed for me.
So how does that apply to social work? There are many clinical perspectives to choose from when working with clients. I believe they are just that – different ways of looking at and describing behavior. Neuroplasticity takes us in a different direction. The behavior change is based on how we are looking at it. If we are working with a family and we are seeing the same behavior we have seen in the last 50 families we have worked with, our responses often become automatic and our expectations for change low. What are the possibilities for change if how we view the behavior actually changes the behavior itself? If we are seeing the same problem for the fiftieth time I think humans tend to set our expectations for change based on the outcome (or lack of outcome) of the previous 49 times.
Neuroplasticity theory states that new neuropathways are created and old neuropathways are rerouted when we look at and think about things differently. A social worker walks into a foster home and sees the foster parent and child arguing about something. The social worker is trained to respond in certain ways and ultimately will remove the child from the home if the behavior is abusive or neglectful. He/she works on “solving the problem”. What happens if the social worker doesn't address the issue as a problem and focuses most of her/his attention and work on strengthening the positive things that are happening. The child has good grades, is physically strong, and is patient and accepting when around younger foster children on outings. Strength based therapy you say? How many of us truly work in the strength based model. We all see the benefits of working in that model but our culture is still based on seeking out and fixing the problems – the medical model. Even finding the ways to change the “presenting problem” to a strength base description is still basing the solution on the problem. The DSM-IV, the gold standard for diagnosis, is based on identifying problems, giving numbers to each one and listing potential justifications for the diagnosis. There is no section for including a justification for a diagnosis based on a person's strengths and positive behavior. I am not saying that we should ignore abusive or neglectful behavior on the part of a client. Abuse should be responded to in much the same way it is now. But the focus of effort needs to be primarily on strengthening the positive behaviors rather than solving the “problems”.
What if the social worker spent 90% of his/her time supporting and strengthening positive client behavior? Based on the Neuroplasticity model, behavior would change in a positive direction. We have all seen it happen. On days when we are feeling positive and good, people respond to us more positively. Children raised in supportive, positive homes tend to do better than children that are humiliated, neglected, or abused. The brain responds positively to a positive environment and vice versa.
What I am saying is that as social workers, the successful client begins with us. Our culture supports the victim mentality and it is difficult to counter an entire culture. Our media focuses on tragedy because it sells the most papers or the most TV airtime. We are excited about negativity. Through Neuroplasticity we learn that we can change how we think about things. Rather than bemoaning the state of the world our time is better spent finding out what is positive. Changing the world is within our grasp. The challenge becomes how to create a positive culture more exciting and interesting than a negative one. Huh? What? Having trouble conceiving such a world? Hmmmmmm. Are we talking about changing neuropathways?