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This paper highlights some key actions social workers can take to help improve the physical health of people living with mental illness. Despite an 80% comorbidity rate, many people living with mental illness still do not receive a physical health check-up. For this and other reasons, people living with mental illness die, on average, 10–20 years prematurely. This early death is usually preceded by years or decades of poor health. Using a collective impact approach, this paper discusses actions to increase autonomy, advocate for better access to quality physical health care, and minimise iatrogenic harm for people living with mental illness. IMPLICATIONS This paper highlights the key opportunities for social workers to improve the physical health of people living with mental illness. Using a collective impact approach, it highlights the vital role social workers can play in enacting the essential elements of the Equally Well national consensus statement, such as advocating equity of access to physical health care services, supporting quality care, and reducing stigma and discrimination for people living with mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The balance between care and control in mental health social work is one of constant tension. In the State of Victoria, Australia, the Mental Health Act 2014 gives coercive powers to social workers employed by public mental health services. These include the power to decide if a person needs to be assessed by a psychiatrist, to "take" a person using bodily restraint, to enter premises, and to search and seize a person's belongings. This paper applies a doctrinal analysis to examine the law, then argues that the use of these powers by social workers, where safe, may be less restrictive than when they are used by police or paramedics. The exercise of these powers may be less traumatic and stigmatising to the people who are subject to them, and social workers may be both legally and ethically obligated to use coercion when appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]