With a diverse career spanning various roles, including inpatient psychiatry at the Valley Regional Hospital, outpatient mental health in Halifax, teaching at the NSCC and community-based initiatives in Cape Breton, Sarah Janes is now thriving as a clinical therapist at the Mental Health Acute Day Hospital in Kentville.
She’s energized by the meaningful impact she and her team are making on patients and their families.
“The Day Hospital itself is kind of a perfect clinical therapy role for a social worker because it’s a very holistic model,” she says. “We look at all the social determinants of health; we look at the whole person from a lens that would appeal to a social worker.”
Sarah’s job sees her run the Day Hospital’s cognitive behavioural therapy groups, one-on-one clinical therapy and family support.
Her path to where she is today was not linear. Her journey includes an undergrad degree in psychology and then law school to pursue a career in public policy and human rights law.
She decided law school was not focused enough on people’s lived personal experiences and decided to pursue a master of social work.
“I really wanted to go into a ‘helping profession’ and then I felt at a certain point that I had some personal experiences and experiences from loved ones that made me think I didn’t only want to focus on the psychological individual causes of people’s suffering. I became more interested in the social components,” she says.
“Social work was a nice marrying of helping others and working with the larger systems that impact their lives.”
Originally from the Annapolis Valley, Sarah is proud to be back in the area helping people in the local community.
“I think growing up in a small town; in the rural parts of Nova Scotia and being around people with lots of different socio-economic experiences and other lived experiences, made me want to work in some sort of helping profession,” she says.
While she says the job is very demanding and stressful, she recommends it for anyone considering a career helping others.
“There’s such a variety of things you can do as a social worker besides individual work: there is work with families and communities, public policy, advocacy work and social change. You really could do a very broad range of types of interventions. I love that about it,” she says.
“I find it extremely inspiring, because nine times out of 10, you see people when they’re really struggling and then you watch them recover and grow. It’s very humbling to see people who have gone through so much begin to work on themselves and their context and keep moving forward.”
Photo of Sarah Janes, clinical therapist at the Mental Health Acute Day Hospital in Kentville.
