The Concept of Mental Health - Assignment Example

MENTAL HEALTH Mental health is one of the most serious issues facing the world today. Only recently have practitioners and the public come to consider mental issues as the public health problem that they truly are. We are witnessing a dramatic shift in the definition of these problems and where and how they should be dealt with. Public understanding of this issue is unfortunately still at an early stage. We need to dramatically increase the amount of information and education out there on this issue. We need to know when such things become a problem and when they should be left alone. Mental health is an issue that affects all of us and must be taken very seriously by all of us. There are important differences evident on the spectrum of mental health. Not all issues are created equally. There are mental disorders, mental problems, and mental illness more generally. We are not always talking about the same thing. This essay will help to explain some of the terminology. What is mental health? Many definitions describe it as the interaction of our individual characteristics and our environment—be it our workplace or family home. We all have a position on this continuum somewhere (Bettney, 3). Our position can be affected by any number of events in our lives. As the weather changes, bringing in stormy clouds, so can our mental health deteriorate. People get divorce, they lose their job—these things can seriously influence the way a person interacts with their environment. Most people define good mental health as happiness with a positive and creative outlook on life. Positive functioning is another important term to describe the good side of the mental health continuum (Keyes, 101). Mental disorders are serious problems which require treatment. They often have biological causes, but it is not always possible to tell. Some examples include schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, and others. They can be traumatic and very disruptive of peoples lives. However, they are often episodic in nature, occurring infrequently, and thus they can be managed (Hockenbury, 34). Mental illness is more significant than mental disorders. While disorders may be episodic, an illness is chronic and omni-present. It shares many of the same characteristics of a disorder. One of the greatest problems about mental illness is the social stigma attached to it. People with mental illness face a great deal of discrimination throughout their lives. They have many fewer opportunities for self-fulfilment. One of the great challenges of this new century is to break down some of these boundaries and try to open up the world of the mentally ill. Education must start young when it comes to mental health issues. But education on the issues is not the only thing that needs to be taught. People need to be taught how to lead healthy lifestyles that will maximize their mental health. From an early age, students should be taught about the mental health continuum and how to lead productive, mentally healthy lives. Judging others is not especially helpful, because definitions of mental health shift as the sands. Also it is important to understand that stereotypes of mental health or mental disorders are not especially useful or realistic. As one academic suggests: People judge the mental health of others. Generally, people who think similarly, who behave similarly, who share values and conform to established ways of doing things and whose opinions are consistent with societys dominant values are seen as mentally healthy, and people who dont conform are not seen this way. There is a feedback mechanism at work: society rewards particular individuals with money and status and fame and respect and, in a sense, confers the label mentally healthy on persons which advance its agenda and exemplify its values, and these people, in turn, produce more output along these lines, such as great art, popular talk shows, sold-out concerts or sports arenas. It motivates people to strive in certain ways (Sulcer, 2).          What can society do to help bring these issues to light and to try to help? A key thing to do is to encourage people suffering from mental illness or mental disorder to for help. No man or woman is an island and it can be very difficult to balance one’s life and to know when and if you might have a problem. You might need help. Sometimes this involves asking your partner to help you out, to have a shoulder to cry on. But it might also involve asking a professional to talk to you and prescribe something. There’s no shame in that: it is important to get past the stigma of mental illness. That’s why those people exist and they know what they’re doing. Sometimes people have so much on the go that they themselves are unable to get a grasp on it all. They need a fresh pair of eyes to help make sense of it all. And that’s where a professional can come in handy.       This kind of education is important, but there are also a number of institutional issues that we must examine when looking at the question of mental health. There are, for example, serious deficits in the American criminal justice system with regards to the mentally ill. Too often their problems are not diagnosed or treated. They are also often kept in the general population rather than in special wards where their problems can be better treated. Part of this stems from the high cost of treatment and the shortage of qualified doctors and nurses working in areas of mental health. Another important aspect of this problem arises from the fact that many states pass on the funding and control of programs for the mentally ill on to the federal government and its bureaucracies (Nunes, 51). Rather than dealing with local problems on a local basis, too many of these very specific problems have to be addressed by a faceless group of officials in a distant capital. This outsourcing has been very unsuccessful in helping improve the situation of the mentally ill with regards to the criminal justice system. There are other public policies we must address regarding mental health. One of the most important things for businesses to consider when starting up is whether to how much of their employees healthcare costs they should pay. This is part of a great debate about healthcare and whether the state or employers should pay it or whether people should be responsible for it themselves. It comes down to the basic question: is healthcare a private or a public good? That is a vital question to ask regarding mental health as costs associated with it can be not only astronomical but seriously affect employees work performances.             Those who believe healthcare is a public good believe everyone has a right to it and that it is an abuse of human rights to not be granted publicly-funded health insurance at birth. They think that people are effectively tied to their jobs because they are afraid to lose their health insurance. They also argue that it seriously reduces labour flexibility and affects productivity as people stay in jobs they might not want just so they maintain their insurance.             There are others who believe the opposite. They would like to see a smaller state that is not responsible for everything in everyone’s life. What could be more personal than health? Why should the government or a business be responsible for paying for an individual’s health? It’s your own choice, for example, whether you smoke or don’t exercise, and yet the business or government must pick up the tab.             With the election of Barack Obama this debate has again come to the forefront as he would like to extend health coverage to all. A bill recently passed that took a big step in this direction. What issue was lost in the mix? The answer was mental illness and its huge cost to the American economy. The truth is, in order to deal with the scourge of mental illness, we need a revolution in caring. We first learn to care for other people in families. The family is one of society’s cornerstones. It is the place we learn, we love, and that defines us. It has many roles, but among its more important roles is in promoting and reinforcing the health of its members. Facing mental illness, a powerful support network is one of the key things people need. They can also provide a standard of care that it may not be possible for even the most well-trained nurse to provide.       Mental health issues are not going anywhere. Indeed, there is a good chance that they will become even more prominent in the next few years as we begin to understand more about them. We need to understand the continuum of mental health and what we can do to properly address these issues. Works consulted Amen, Daniel G. Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: the Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness. Three Rivers Press, c1998. Bentley, Julie. A Framework to Support the Development of a Provincial Mental Health Policy. Government of Newfoundland. September 2001. Burton, Joan. “Healthy workplace framework and model: Background and supporting literature and practices.” World Health Organization. (2009) Higgins, Chris, Duxbury Linda and Johnson Karen. “Exploring the Link Between Work-Life Conflict and Demands on Canada’s Health Care System.” Public Health Agency of Canada. (2004) Hockenbury, Don and Sandy. Discovering Psychology. Worth Publishers. 2004 Keyes, Corey. The Mental Health Continuum. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 2002 Landsman, Karen J. et al. Loving Someone With OCD: Help for You and Your Family. New Harbinger Pub., c2005. Morey, Bodie & Kim T. Meuser. The Family Intervention Guide to Mental Illness: Recognizing Symptoms & Getting Treatment. New Harbinger Publications, c2007. Nunes, Julia & Scott Simmie. Beyond Crazy: Journeys Through Mental Illness. McClelland & Stewart, c2002. Phillips, Katharine A. The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Rev. ed.. Oxford University Press, c2005. Schaufeli, W.B., & Enzmann, D. “The burnout companion to study and research: A critical analysis.” Taylor & Francis. (1998). Sulcer, Thomas. "Mentally healthy mind:An exploration of how to flourish as a human being." KNOL, 2010. http://knol.google.com/k/thomas-sulcer/mentally-healthy-mind/38jyd65oa42fm/3# Wilson, Virginia S. Mental Illness: Survival and Beyond: A Practical Guide to the Inpatient Psychiatric Experience. Trafford, c1998. Read More