You read that I am a social worker, but you may have wondered, what is a social worker? Are social workers the people who remove children from abusive situations? Sometimes they do, though a large percentage of the "social workers" at the Department of Social Services do not have degrees in Social Work. And many people with degrees in Social Work have never worked for the Department of Social Services or for any other governmental agency. Social workers can be found in a variety of fields, such as hospital care and politics. And a lot of social workers do what I do--providing therapy and steering clients toward community resources. In fact, the majority of therapy conducted in the United States is conducted by social workers. Since Social Work education covers psychology, biology, community resources, and community organizing, social workers are equipped to perform a variety of services.
One service social workers do not provide is prescribing medications. We learn about meds, and we can refer you to physicians or nurse practitioners who prescribe meds, but we don't write scripts. Personally, I am glad that prescribing meds is not part of my job, for meds and talk therapy work in opposite ways. Meds provide relief, whereas talk therapy initially exposes people to pain. Of course talk therapy ultimately provides relief too, but only after people work through their pain. So it makes things easier for me to know that my clients know that they are there to face pain before they can start to feel better.