Q&A: Meet Amar Ghelani, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream

Dr. Amar Ghelani worked in shelters, addiction programs, mobile crisis intervention, prisons and various mental health settings for nearly two decades before joining U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work this year as an assistant professor in the teaching stream. In many ways, it’s been a smooth transition because Ghelani sees social workers as natural educators. He completed his PhD at the Wilfred Laurier University Faculty of Social Work, where his research examined cannabis use in youth who have experienced psychosis. We asked Ghelani about his time on the frontlines, his current research and how he’ll ground his teaching in his rich field experience.

What led you to social work?

I was always interested in social issues and mental health, and I was looking for an opportunity to help people, learn from people, and contribute to social justice movements. But there was one interaction I had on the street with a couple experiencing homelessness and addiction when I was a teenager that really opened my eyes to the kinds of problems people face. I didn’t really know what social work was then, but I knew I wanted to work with unhoused populations, wherever that took me.

So where did this interest take you, after you earned your undergraduate degree in social work?

I started at a shelter in Ottawa working the overnight shift and on the street outreach team, then moved to an addictions treatment centre for homeless men. Then I decided to do my MSW at UBC, where I focused on trauma and addictions and did a placement in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with Indigenous populations. Later, I was a youth and family counsellor in a community service, did mental health crisis intervention with Peel Regional Police, worked in an early psychosis intervention program, was a DBT therapist, and spent four years as a prison social worker with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. I also spent a few years here at U of T’s Health and Counselling Centre as the mental health care coordinator. My last position was in forensic assessment at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

These all sound like challenging frontline roles. What kept you going, and how did you avoid burnout?

I’ve always really enjoyed all the jobs that I’ve done, including working with complex populations. In most of my jobs, it hasn’t even felt like work. I think it helps a lot if you’re open to continuous learning and consulting with people who’ve been doing the role for a while. Also, I just like hearing people’s stories and being helpful to them. It energizes me. Seeing people overcome addiction or trauma and grow really drives me. 

What prompted you to do your PhD? 

It was the legalization of cannabis, actually. I’d worked with cannabis users for my whole career, and it was the most complicated drug to me in some ways. Often, people don’t see it as a problem, but it does contribute to certain issues and plays an important role — sometimes positive, and sometimes not so positive — in people’s lives. I worked with youth who’d had a psychotic episode, and I wanted to understand cannabis use in this population from the users’ perspectives.

What made you take this full-time role at FIFSW after all your years of practice?

Well, this is my dream job. It’s in the teaching stream and I’ve always loved teaching. Social work, to me, is teaching. So I’ve always been kind of a teacher, especially early in my career at the homeless shelter, where I was leading addictions groups. I’ve also facilitated anger management groups for youth involved in the criminal justice system. I really learned how to keep people’s attention and make learning practical for people struggling with life problems. Apart from my teaching skills, I feel like after more than 18 years of practice I have some useful insights for social work students.

What are some of those insights?

A widespread mental health crisis is happening right now, and social workers are vital to supporting individuals and families through that crisis. Social work students need to develop practical skills, including applying evidence-based interventions and measuring their effectiveness. That’s one of the things that I really want to get across to students: we have to set goals and know how to evaluate progress so that, when clients reach out for help, social workers know that they’re being effective and competent.

You’re in the teaching stream, but you’ll also be conducting some research. What are your current projects?

Something I’ve noticed throughout my career is that one of the most challenging things that social workers do is help people who have signs of psychosis or active psychotic symptoms. There isn’t much education and not a lot of opportunities to practice social work skills with people who are acutely psychotic. This faculty has a lot of excellent simulation opportunities for developing clinical skills, but not for psychosis. So part of my research right now is doing a scoping review to understand how other health fields have incorporated psychosis-focused simulations, and how social work can adopt them. I’m also working on a grant proposal to develop materials to train actors to portray people with psychosis using the advice and guidance of people with lived experience of psychosis.

What are you teaching this year? 

I’m teaching Elements and Lab, which focuses on foundational practice skills, mental health and social work, advanced mental health practice, and crisis intervention. I have pretty varied experience in all these areas, and I’m really looking forward to sharing it.

Q&A by Megan Easton; Photo by Jim Moore

Recent publications by Amar Ghelani

Ghelani, A. (2023), Perspectives on cannabis risks and harm reduction among youth in Early Psychosis Intervention programs: a qualitative study, Mental Health and Social Inclusion,  Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-06-2023-0064

Ghelani, A. (2023) Perspectives toward cannabidiol (CBD) among youth in Early Psychosis Intervention programs: A qualitative study. Early Intervention in Psychiatry, 18 (1), 10-17

Ghelani, A. (2022) Knowledge and Skills for Social Workers on Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams. Clinical Social Work Journal, 50, 414–425 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-021-00823-x

Ghelani, A., Douglin, M., & Diebold, A. (2022). Effectiveness of Canadian police and mental health co-response crisis teams: A scoping review. Social Work in Mental Health, 21(1), 86–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332985.2022.2074283