Understanding Mental Illness - Essay Example

"Understanding Mental Illness" is a marvelous example of a paper on the disorder.
Mental illness, as a health condition, affects the normal functioning of the brain. Mental illness is associated with a wide range of conditions from the individual's behavior, mood, and thinking. The fact that mental illness affects normal brain functioning can prove to be deadly to the affected individual. The affected individual is often miserable and cannot perform his or her daily life activities. Mental illness is caused by factors such as stressful experiences in an individual’s life. The experiences may range from the loss of a loved one, which most often results in the diminished psychological well-being of the affected individual. For a person to be effectively diagnosed to be suffering from mental illness, the deadly effects associated must clear. For instance, for an individual to meet the criteria to be diagnosed as mentally ill, the presenting symptoms must cause significant distress to the person, occupational, social, educational, or social functioning over a given period. Even though mental illness can be considered deadly, involuntary commitment can help save the affected individuals' lives. Involuntary committing the individual involves taking away the freedom of the individual.

Mental illness is associated with possible harm to the individual and the people around the individual. Involuntary commitment helps save the individual from the possible harm that can result when the individual's mental functionality is compromised. Involuntary commitments entail some set laws to prevent the deadly consequences associated with the condition (Donald). Therefore, the strategy is meant to protect the affected individual from harming himself to those who are close to him. The involuntary commitments laws involved in protecting the individuals from the deadly mental illness effects are police powers and parent’s patriae. Police powers are state-enforced laws in dealing with mental illness. Invoking the police powers results in the individual's arrest if the individual breaks the set rules. Parent's patriae, on the other hand, are set laws and policies for helping those individuals who are not able to help themselves due to mental illness. Mental illness affects every individual regardless of age, and therefore, laws guarantee protection regardless of the individual’s age. For instance, the laws are justified to protect children from abusive parents to protect them from possible harm (Richard & Weinberger 273). Mental illness can also result from an individual’s development process. Therefore, the laws help protect the individuals from the harm that may result from the disabilities obtained during the developmental stages of the individual. Parents' patriae policies often result in the individual's treatment and care by keeping them away from the possible sources of danger. The strategy does not involve the incarceration of the individual, which means the individual is not confined or has his or her freedom taken away, as in police power policies.

Commitment laws are often made based on circumstances when the individual is trying to take another person’s life. For instance, when an individual is trying to shoot another person, a conclusion is made to protect society from possible harm. The same case applies when the individual is trying to shoot and take away his or her own life. The state laws, therefore, that person is detained to provide the necessary protection. Involuntary commitments help set standards for the individual's level of dangerousness (Marvin et al., 115). The level of dangerousness is set to a certain bar such that individual minus meet to imminently proven that state powers can be exercised (Leslie 174). For instance, mental assessments done for psychologically disabled individual feeding on feces does not classify the person to the level of dangerousness that needs confinement. Just because the individual has to feed on feces does not mean the individual is dangerous since it would kill the person.

Those with mental illness have the right to be exposed to the least restrictive treatment process and not that with the most benefits. Given that the individual civil rights are already ripped off by involuntary commitment, the individual is therefore entitled to an environment with the least restrictions. It is of varied opinions whether people with mental illness should be put in the most beneficial and not least restrictive environment. The opinion is based on the assumption that the conditions are not outpatient attempts to make a balance between the conditions. The concept involving the least restrictive setting requires that the affected individual is put to an out-patient commitment in receiving the care and treatment of the prevailing mental illness. The individual is protected by the court orders to live in the community as they follow the treatment plans from the court orders. The measure is less restrictive than inpatient commitment and works best to save the individual from mental illness harm.