During the last therapy meeting, Jake Levy was talking about his emotional fixation on an email he got lately, about his comrade committing suicide. He expressed deep remorse for the gruesome statistics that every day, “22 veterans commit suicide in the US” (Laureate Education, 1:47). This occurrence led him to want to lobby the state legislature to start a suicide prevention program for veterans who are getting mental health services.
Jake Levy is defining the problem himself – the problem being the lack of concern for suicide among veterans even from the VA, who is an organization directly involved with helping the veterans. During the conversation Jake has gone through both strategic modes of policy planning: from social justice-political mode, identifies the problem and its relevance, to economic-rational mode (Midgley & Livermore, 2008, p. 218). In the process of going through the latter, Jake was identifying the problems as well as searching for options to set up a new policy (Midgley & Livermore, 2008). At the end, he was eager to take social action – “to make positive change” (Community Toolbox). By doing so, he was expression values such as compassion for other human beings and generosity in being willing to volunteer his time and energy in for the sake of greater change.
Jake is excelling at the first steps of social policy analysis. He has done some research into the problem, using an “up-to-date research” (Jansson, 2018, p. 205). This fact points to his high level of commitment to the issue. However, at the defining stage Jake has omitted the fact that veterans who are not receiving any mental health services or are not aware of the VA might be in a situation just as desperate as those who do. He also discussed only the issue of veteran suicide, which is understandable, since he was deeply affected personally, however, other urgent issues need to be addressed. Particularly, these include veterans being prescribed opioid-containing medication, which leads to them getting intensely addicted very quickly. This situation could lead to many negative outcomes, from suicide to criminal behavior to domestic violence.
References
Community Toolbox. (n.d). Chapter 5 Section 4: Social action. Web.
Jansson, B. S. (2018). Becoming an effective policy advocate: From policy practice to social justice. (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Series.
Laureate Education. (Producer). (2013). Levy (Episode 7 of 42). In Sessions. Web.
Midgley, J., & Livermore, M. M. (2008). The handbook of social policy (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.