The Identification and Treatment of Mental Health Issues - Essay Example

roll number: Psychology is the scientific study of human mind, the way it works, its functions, and how it affects human behaviour. To make things simple we can define psychology as the study of mind and behaviour. By conducting research on human psychology, psychologists identify how one person is different from others and how thoughts and emotions develop certain behaviours in human beings (Brocki, & Wearden, 2006). There are numerous applications of psychology such as mental health treatment, ergonomics, performance enhancement, and self-help. Researchers use these psychological applications to understand human psychology and to solve the problems relating to human mind and behaviour. Along with human behaviour, psychology elaborates human personality, feelings, thoughts, emotions, social behaviour, and motivation (Tsaousis, & Nikolaou, 2005). By thoroughly studying human psychology the reasons of specific behaviour and action can be understood. Psychology is not only an academic study, in fact it is both academic study as well as applied science that examine human behaviour and mind (McAlister, Perry, & Parcel, 2008). Researches in human psychology aim to understand how a person feels, thinks, and act. A major portion of psychology is devoted to the identification and treatment of mental health issues but psychology alone cannot completely solve all the mental health problems so medication is also necessary along with health psychology. Psychology is not only helpful in mental health issues; it can also be applied to many daily life issues like ergonomics, performance enhancement, motivation, self-help, and productivity (Brocki, & Wearden, 2006). By finding the root causes of certain strange human actions psychologists can help people to get rid of their daily life problems and live a healthy peaceful life. Psychology explores the unconscious mind and then finds out the reason behind certain actions and behaviours. It is necessary to have basic understanding of health and social care because health is a serious issue for all and by having basic understanding of health issues people can avoid many things and can also restrain others to use non healthy products (Michie, et. al, 2009). Furthermore, people interact with each other and have impact on each other’s life, by having information about social care they can benefit others and can help other people to live a healthy life. To get basic understanding about health and social care it is not necessary to read a book or to study psychology. People can get information about social care and health issue by just carefully observing the society. Societal norms also explain responsibilities of individual towards the betterment of society and also help people to work and behave in a society. Many people voluntary take part in corporate social responsibility acts and help people to deal with their mental health problems and other daily life problems, therefore having basic understanding of health and social care is good for all (McAlister, Perry, & Parcel, 2008). In today’s world people are engaging in many health damaging activities and smoking is one of them. They know about the negative consequences of this health damaging habit but still doing it. The reason behind this attitude is different from person to person but most of the time the reason lies in psychological factors. People smoke to reduce their stress and tension, and sometime to socialize with others. No matter why people smoke, it is a health damaging activity and has harmful effect on human health. Health psychology aims to explore behaviours and experiences that creates illness or gives healthy life and have impact on human body. It also proposes ways of modifying health care activities and polices. Health psychologists develop methods of overcoming additions in order to prevent illness and promote health. The study of the relationship between individual traits and illness helps health psychologists to find out the root cause behind illness (Brocki, & Wearden, 2006). Many factors such as lifestyle, economic condition, culture, and society also plays an important role in developing unhealthy behaviours. Health psychology identifies reasons behind mental illness and helps patients to recover from illness. Furthermore, health psychologists investigate how certain disease affects people’s psychological health. An ill or injured person faces many diverse emotions which increase the problem by causing depression or by lowering individual’s self-esteem. Health psychology helps to identify ways to lower the impacts of these emotions and also assists people towards improving their life. Along with mental health problems health psychology also helps people in their social and behavioural problems because all are interlinked with each other. The relationship between physical and psychological processes is knows as psychophysiology (Michie, et. al, 2009). It is an important area of psychology and many researchers work on this area to find out how human perceptions affect health and behaviour. Human perception and thinking stimulates many hormones and enzymes that bring changes in our bodies. Body functions of hormones and enzymes and thinking and perception increases or decreases normal function of these hormones and enzymes. In order to live a good healthy life, one needs to have good mental condition. A person should know about his/her feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and should have ability to face the stressful conditions. Additionally, human mind is a very powerful organ because it regulates other organs so for healthy body one should have a healthy mind. Mental perceptions affect health behaviour same as our mind affects our mood; therefore good mental health is necessary for good physical health. Health behaviour is directly related to human perception; if patient has strong will power then he will recover from disease more rapidly than others because a positive attitude brings positive changes in body by improving immune system and thus helps people (Tsaousis, & Nikolaou, 2005). Additionally, human psychologists provide ways to recover from illness; they motivate patients to think positively and to believe that they will get better. Encouragement and motivation from others play a major role to improve mental health of patients. The most extensively used framework for understanding and examining health behaviour is Health Belief Model (HBM) (Champion, & Skinner, 2008). The model has been used successfully to promote medial compliance, health screening use, and to prevent people from bad habits such as alcohol consumption and smoking. The model is basically a framework that motivates people to take positive health actions and avoid those actions that have negative consequences on health. The key element of HBM model is avoiding negative health consequences, for example, a person might exercise daily to avoid health problems like obesity and heart attack. HBM is an effective framework in order to educate patients about health strategies (Champion, & Skinner, 2008). In spite of having information about health damaging actions people perform these actions in their daily life and create health issues for themselves. Smoking is one of those health damaging behaviour and it has many negative impacts on human health. Tobacco consumption on regular basis causes many harmful diseases like lungs cancer, mouth cancer, and heart attack (Michie, et. al, 2009). Furthermore, the main reason behind smoking is psychological; people consider smoking as a charming and glamorous activity and in order to become glamorous they start smoking (Pais-Ribeiro, et. al, 2007). According to induction theory people interpret event of their surrounding and adopt a particular behaviour according to their interpretation. If any unhealthy activity is considered as normal in surrounding then an individual will also consider this activity as normal and adopt it. Attribution theory explains that people shape their behaviour on the basis of their experience and interpretation of environment. Additionally, people are reluctant to quit health damaging behaviours because they consider them normal. Smoking is a health damaging behaviour and is very dangerous because it does not harm initially but it causes many serious diseases in the long-run (Smith, et. al, 2008). People know about all the consequences but still smoke. The reason behind this negative behaviour lies in our society where smoking is considered as a pleasure giving activity or fun. People engage in many unhealthy activities due to the society in which they live. Social psychology explains human behaviour with the context of societal norms and values, and social psychology is one of the major reasons behind unhealthy behaviour. Furthermore, many psychologists use Health Belief Model to educate youngsters as well as adults about psychological and physical health consequences of smoking. The model has also been used by those institutes which help addictive people to get rid of addiction and to live a healthy life. HBM focuses on adverse effects of many health damaging behaviours and provide ways to change those behaviours by highlighting the damages (Stringhini, et.al, 2011). Health psychologists motivate people to take healthy actions and to avoid unhealthy lifestyle by using HBM. People adopt many unhealthy habits due unrealistic optimism they think that they will not suffer any problem. Due to unrealistic optimism they neglect negative consequences of unhealthy habits and then suffer. Self-efficacy beliefs play an important role to share an individual’s behaviours, because human behaviour and motivation are influenced by personal beliefs and judgment. Despite many advantages HBM cannot be used in all cases or scenarios because of its limitations. HBM model does not account for economic or environmental factors that prohibit or sometimes promote unhealthy behaviours because it only focuses on health related reasons. It assumes that highlighting consequences of unhealthy behaviour is enough to encourage people to change those behaviours. The model focuses more on motivating people to take correct action rather than predicting their future behaviours. Additionally, many studies have identified that HBM has weak predictive power and it lacks defined rules because it does not predict individual’s future behaviours (Smith, et. al, 2008). The model is not action oriented therefore does not work for programs that contain variety of non-health related information. In order to improve the effectiveness of HBM a new variable of self-efficacy has been added by Albert Bandura in 1977 (Champion, & Skinner, 2008). Self-efficacy explains person’s belief about his/her ability to do certain actions in order to achieve specific results. Generally, people are reluctant to do any new activity unless they think that can perform it. For example, in spite of having information that a new behaviour is useful people do not adopt that behaviour unless they believe that they are capable of adopting it. Self-efficacy use incremental goal setting strategies to develop people believe in their ability therefore it increases the effectiveness of HBM. People adopt health damaging behaviours due to psychological factors and these factors are the main reasons that create numerous physical and mental issues. Reference List Brocki, J. M., & Wearden, A. J. (2006). A critical evaluation of the use of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in health psychology. Psychology and health. 21(1), 87-108. Champion, V. L., & Skinner, C. S. (2008). The health belief model. Health behavior and health education: Theory, research, and practice, 4, 45-65. McAlister, A. L., Perry, C. L., & Parcel, G. S. (2008). How individuals, environments, and health behaviors interact. Health behavior, 169. Michie, S., Abraham, C., Whittington, C., McAteer, J., & Gupta, S. (2009). Effective techniques in healthy eating and physical activity interventions: a meta-regression. Health Psychology, 28(6), 690. Pais-Ribeiro, J., da Silva, A. M., Meneses, R. F., & Falco, C. (2007). 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