Mental health and its promotion - Assignment Example

and Patel, P., 2005. p. 13). Social class has inverse relationship with mental health that is, the lower a person’s position in the social class, the higher is the possibility of having a mental health problem.The service sector of the Western European countries sufferred from insecure employment with majority of the population being unemployed, poorly educated, below the poverty line, substance abuser, mental health patients, or criminals (Pilgrim, 2009, p. 181). Low income affects the likehood of developing a mental illness twice as those with average income.

Usually, these people belong to the lowest position in the social class and sufferred greatly from high rate of emotional disturbance and limited access to treatment modalities and facilities in the field of health care.Covington (2008) delineates a number of reasons for the differences in availing mental health services among different social class postions: (1) deprivation and structural inequalities such as low income and discrimination among the lower social classes psychologically response to demoralization and feels distressed and hopeless; (2) single or multiple negative life events made a person at risk to develop mental illness; and (3) presence of social support protects the mental health of a person from adverse life events and social isolation and exclusion of lower classes from members of the society leads to poor mental health(p. 241). However, the inverse relationships identified between social class and mental health has a few exceptions and needs to be studied further.

Role of Primary Care in Promoting Mental Health of Communities Mental health promotion is critical to nursing functions and nurses are challenged to respond to various demands of different social classes especially when it comes to primary care. Primary care represents the most important setting for mental health promotion because it is the first point of contact with the health services.Primary care services include self-referral, health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and personal social services (Barryand Jenkins, 2007, p. 256).However, mental health is often neglected in the delivery of primary care services because of lack of mental health orientation.

Primary care workers have the responsibility of delivering quality care among localities. Due to the reasons that primary care is coommunity-based in nature, local primary care workers have the advantage of facilitating its role. Primary care also has a role of providing non-stigmatized health services with the collaboration from community groups such as schools, workplaces, local agencies, and voluntary organizations. As the primary mode of contact from health services, primary care offers referral of people with mental health illness.

A research in United Kingdom identified 15% of people diagnosed with mental health problem, 30% see the primary care physician for the mental health problem, and 90% are being cared for in the primary care settings (Barryand Jenkins, 2007, p. 256). Primary care is in the first lead of the pathway to care in order to recognize early the presence of mental health problems. The primary care’s role is extended to the prevention of subsequent episodes of a mental health problem attack and to the promotion of physical and mental