Introduction
Psychology is portrayed as a noble field where clinicians seek who help clients through the human suffering that they experience from psychiatric issues. There is controversy as to what constitutes human suffering to the extent that therapeutic and pharmacological interventions need to occur. The line between normal functioning or coping with the realities of life and psychiatric illness appears to blur further with every new addition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) from the American Psychiatric Association (APA). An example of this blurring is the proposed addition of Complicated Grief Disorder which has the potential to medicalize and dehumanize an adaptive process that occurs when one is bereft of a relationship. What is deemed abnormal by one generation, in one edition of the DSM can be totally revised in another edition. But what is abnormal and normal in our society at any given period?
The use of the terms abnormal and normal seems archaic when dealing with symptoms of mental illness given the mathematical origin of the terms. More appropriately, the terms adaptive and nonadaptive speak to the transient nature of the relativity in our thoughts, behavior, physical symptoms, and psychosocial interactions. Several individuals I work with have been institutionalized their entire lives, thus living for decades with no privacy and little safety from other residents and unscrupulous care givers. They display behaviors today that are described as maladaptive because the situation that they live in has changed and the old behavior has not changed.
For instance, a client has been institutionalized since for 31 of his 35 years of life. He hordes items such as garbage,...
... middle of paper ...
...h ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.
American Psychiatric Association. 2010. DSM-5 Development. www.dsm5.org.
Brendel, David (2001). Multifactorial causation of mental disorders: a proposal
to improve the DSM. Harvard Review Of Psychiatry. 2001. 9 (1),
pp. 42-45.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999a). Mental Health: A report of
the Surgeon General – executive summary. Rockville, MD: U. S. Department of
Heatlh and Human Services, Substance Abuse, and Mental Health Services
Administration, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health,
1999. http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html.
U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999b). Mental Health: Culture,
race, ethnicity: Mental health: A Supplement to the report of the Surgeon
General 2001.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (2013) mental illness is defined as a health
How do the issues facing those doing strategic planning differ from those doing tactical planning? Can the two really be
In other words, the patient was sick because of his or her time in the institution. I find this interesting because without a more human telling of the story by Grob, it is hard to gauge if the psychosis of patients deteriorated in general with the length of stay in the institution and if because of this, did that impact the policies or methods of practice? I believe it would be similar to what they are finding now with the orphans of Romania in the 1980’s who were raised in institutions with only basic and minimal human contact and now are mostly homeless and unable to function in society or inmates in prison who have spent years behind bars and then are let go into the general population. History has proven that people struggle with trying to acclimate back into the general population. As a result of this by the 1980’s one-third of the homeless population in the United States were said to be seriously mentally ill. (PBS, "Timeline: Treatments for Mental
Normal grief is characterized by waves of intense sadness, but the bereaved person is still capable of warm feelings. Most people experiencing normal grief do not meet the criteria for MDD and they usually don’t seek professional treatment anyway. However, those who suffer from MDD require early diagnosis and treatment. A study found that time spent in depression is a risk factor for suicide attempts (Sokero, 2005). In a National Public Radio interview, Sidney Zisook is quoted as saying: “I’d rather make the mistake of calling someone depressed who may not be depressed, than missing the diagnosis of depression, not treating it, and having that person kill themselves.” Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment of MDD is vital, regardless of what type of life event triggered the
were males, 7221, and the rest 564 were females. In order to see if the participates had any sort of mental illness they looked at self reported treatment, related to mental health (Biltz). The results of this study found that the amount of inmates that participating in this study had a disproportionally number of inmates with mental healthy that were physically victimized. According to this study prisons are a violent and unsafe place for people who suffer from mental illness (Biltz). Male inmates who suffered from any form of mental illness were nearly 1.6 times more likely to be physically victimized while in prison. Females inmates who had a mental illness were even more likely to suffer from physical victimization, they were nearly 2 times more likely than male inmates with mental illness (Blitz). Inmates that were African Americans and Hispanics were more likely to be physically victimized either by inmates or staff.
There are several definitions of abnormality in mental health, any deviation from what's classed as ideal mental health is abnormal, ideal mental health is: holding a positive view of oneself, freedom/independence, positive friendships/relationships, able to grow/develop, an accurate perception of reality and being able to meet day to day tasks. (Jahoda 1958)
Mental wellbeing is a key component of complete health and wellness that is usually overlooked by individuals of all ages. The WHO defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ From the definition, to achieve a state of perfect health, mental wellbeing has to be put into consideration.
Would You Rather? is a popular game among children, teenagers, and even adults. The game simply gives players two choices and asks them which they would rather. However, what would a player choice if they picked up a car and it read, “Would You Rather… have a mental illness or a physical illness?” You could easily say that mental diseases are worse and name all of the aspects that are terrifying about them; however, you could also say that physical illnesses are worse and list the gory realities of it as well. But what about them both, side by side, with all of their painful characteristics and facts. Mental and physical diseases are no worse than one another because they both disarray daily lives and activities, both
There is no greater time to create a platform to discuss the overhaul of a system of care such as the mental health system in America. Over the past 2 decades, the increase of violent acts in our communities have been attributed to the untreated and abandoned individuals who suffer from mental illness. Despite the government’s best efforts, the lapse in judgement has proven to be devastating to our community and change is a necessary component for intervention and prevention. The purpose of this manuscript’s existence is to bring to light to this overlooked correlation and identify solutions that will be effective and practical.
Mental Health is an issue that millions of individuals are facing here in the United States. Illnesses such as anxiety and panic attacks, borderline personality disorder, drug and alcohol addiction, and depression affect the lives of so many.
“I was feeling really depressed yesterday.” “She looks so anorexic.” “I’m really OCD about my room.” “My boyfriend is acting so bipolar.” We all hear variations of these sentences daily and may even use them ourselves. Although it is not intended to cause harm to anyone, mental illness should not be phrased as adjectives. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) says that one in five Americans has a mental illness but those seeking help are not taken as seriously as they would be if they were exhibiting a physical health problem. According to the NHS Human Services, “92 percent of people with physical health problems receive the treatment they need, but by comparison, only 26 percent of people with mental
Health is a complex concept, and when we talk about health we refer to body health and to the health of the mind, the health of relationships between us and those around us, the spiritual health. Looking online on one of the additional resources recommended, www.nimh.nih.gov, I have noticed that one of the symptoms of most diseases that affect a person's mental health is lack of sleep. Lack of sleep not only worsens man's mental health, but also causes serious imbalances in metabolism, immunity, general mood, and last but not least, affects the ability of learning and memorizing among students. The sleep fulfills a number of vital functions for both our mind and body. We spend about a third of our lives sleeping, which is a valuable and useful
My understanding of the term of mental health is always changing over time by my different personal experiences. My first understanding of mental health is from a term of mental illness, all my previous understandings of mental illness are representing negative things to me, such as fatal and dangerous. There was a story of mental illness I experienced in my childhood and I believed that the story shaped my misunderstanding of mental illness.
In the past, mental illness was taboo to discuss and there was fear surrounding the topic. However, remarkable strides have been made in figuring out the causes of the disease and weighing the most effective treatments specialized for each specific disease. According to the American Psychotic Association, “A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.”
In today’s world, mental illness is still looked upon as a very bad thing and the negative views of mental illness are common within the employees. Most of the time, people assume that employees who suffer from mental illness are often seen as weird, defensive, and hard to talk to. Generally, concepts about mental illness tend to be subjective, leading to difficulties in defining mental illness. One article has described mental illness as, “ mentally distorted, mad, or crazy” and the degree of mental illness varies depending from person to person (Corrigan et al. 2010, p. 909). The following essay is based on the topic ‘Mental Illness as an Emerging Discourse’ and the article ‘Employee Mental Illness: Managing the Hidden Epidemic’ was the main article that was analysed and used in the essay to discuss the topic. The analysis has been divided into two parts which are covered equally by the study group members.