Depressive and Anxiety Disorders - Essay Example

Name Tutor Course Date Introduction Depressive and anxiety disorders are common mental illnesses in all parts of the globe. Today’s mental health practitioner is faced with a wide range of pharmacological issues confronting patients seeking mental health services. Drug therapies are common place, and are in many cases viewed as the primary intervention of mental problems. Pharmacological approaches mental health can be efficient, and offer treatment options with considerable therapeutic potential. However, the current pharmacological and biomedical milieu is undermining pharmacotherapy and counseling which have proven to be effective ways of treating mental illnesses. How mental health issues are presented in the two newspapers Prevalence of depression The newspaper articles displays that 60 percent of individuals have found it hard to cope mentally and are suffering depression, anxiety or stress at least once in their life. 59% of Britons have suffered anxiety, 75% stress and 55% depression and this reveals that mental wellbeing and health is relevant to most individuals. People who are always diagnosed with mental health problems isolate themselves because mental health is usually treated as a taboo. This makes it hard for individual to undergo counseling and treatment and go back to their normal lives. Treatment of depression In regard to treatment of anxiety and depression, national health institute figures reveal that prescriptions of antidepressants have doubled in the last decade. The rise is thought to be as a result of increased diagnosis, decreased stigma around mental ill health and increasing worries about finances and jobs prompted by the economic depression. However several individuals are being treated with drugs unnecessarily, particularly those with milder signs of depression because of shortage of counseling or talking therapies which utilize discussions other than medications to tackle difficulties. Many individuals are being diagnosed with depression, but majority of them would be better treated by having access to talking therapies, particularly those with mild or moderate depression. Use of talking therapies Talking therapies work well as drugs for treatment of mild depression and cognitive behavioral therapy is also good for greatly serious depression. However, provision of these therapies has not been good and the general were attaining more of an alternative between talking treatments and tablets. Antidepressants are too frequently provided in primary care since the waiting lists for substitute treatments are so long and doctors are supposed to think hard on placing patients on these drugs since they have considerable side effects (Blashfield and Burgess 97). History of counseling and psychotherapy According to Bentall, counseling came into place in western societies after the industrial revolution as capitalism started to take over and science to reinstate religion (78). It was within this context that the notion of psychotherapy and couselling addressing the inner life of an individual started to make sense. Additionally, human distress sorrow came under medical other than moral regulation, as science started to replace religion. The difficulties that individuals had in their living became medicalised, and individuals started to categorize emotional setbacks as they did psychical problems and to regard them as sicknesses which would be medically treated. Winnicott notes that hypnosis played a considerable part in emergence of psychotherapy and counseling since it signified the transformation of mesmerism into scientific medicine (88). In this part, Sigmund Freud may be credited with popularizing, if not discovering, the talking cure or therapy, which represents the basis of majority of therapeutic approaches today. Freud was arguably the first person to assimilate his ideas, and ideas that were around at this time, into a logical theoretical model, which made therapy relevant to all persons. In the UK, the extent of depression, anxiety and other mental difficulties and the effect on inability gains, have been emphasize; The Depression report. This report has resulted to the Department Health dedication to considerably increase accessibility of mental health therapies, which has also been influenced by national institute for clinical excellence guidelines, which has concluded that psychological therapies are as efficient as drug treatment in short tern and better in long term. In the real sense, fluctuating economic climates can influence on both the need for psychotherapy and counseling, and the financing that is offered to Current western diagnostic of systems and their history Diagnosis of mental illnesses initially emerged during the 19th century as a portion of the novel medical specialism of psychiatry. It initially focused on madness which later came be called schizophrenia and melancholia which is now called depression. The elaboration and formalization of the forms of diagnosis used today is greatly connected with work of psychopathologist Emil Kraepelin institutes three major axioms which came be termed medical naturalism. The three axioms are that that mental disorders are genetically determined illnesses of the nervous system, mental disorders are deteriorating and fixed conditions and mental disorders are naturally occurring, separate and in different categories. The survival of diagnosis Today, presumptions on the genetic origins of mental diseases still uphold a strong place in psychiatry. Nevertheless, the enlarged categorization scheme in the 20th century, to include neuroses, substance misuse or personality disorders, implied that the central role of biology was more ambiguous or improbable. Psychiatrists influenced by psychoanalysis came up with a theory of neurosis that highlighted intra-psychic and interpersonal conflicts to account for mental disorder. Additionally, behaviourist psychology started to offer its own environmentalist elucidations for neurotic conduct and experience. What is contemporary known as common mental health problems raised in frequency during the economic decline. The current system, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) utilized by the American psychiatric association doesn’t assume any understanding of aetiology. Instead, it focuses upon argued symptom checklists as sufficient and necessary criteria for certain like anxiety or depression. (American Psychiatric Association, 52). This more vigilant approach to presumptions on the cause of mental health difficulties emerged because in the APA psychoanalytical and biological psychiatrists had irresolvable and opposing views on aetiology. In the UK, practitioners in national health service apt to utilize the International (statistical) Classification of Diseases and related health problems (ICD) system while therapists and counsellors are usually more familiar with DSM. A major depressive disorder is diagnosed if an individual has two or more of these episodes with exclusion of symptoms that are as a result of general medical condition or mood incongruent hallucinations or delusions; Depressed mood most of the time, nearly all day, as designated by subjective report such as feelings of sadness or observations made by other people. Distinctly diminished pleasure or interest in almost all or all activities most times of the day as indicated by subjective account or observations made by other people. Considerable loss of weight when one is not dieting or gain of weight or decrease or increase in appetite almost every day. Hypersomnia or insomnia almost every day. Psychomotor retardation or agitation almost every day, recognizable by others , not simply subjective feelings of being slowed down or restlessness Loss of energy or fatigue almost every day. Diminished capability to concentrate or think, or indecisiveness, almost every day as observed by others or by subjective account. The politics of diagnosis and formulation and mixed messages from psychotherapies Both diagnosis and forms of formulation are kinds of sense making on distress. Since a diagnostic view has been connected to history of medicine, one explanation for its dominance in the modern culture is merely about medical domination; it is the greatest status profession liable for understanding distress. Ownership of DSM trademark have guaranteed the reign of psychiatry over psychopathology since psychiatry control the manner in which mental disorders will be determined, named, diagnosed and described. Therefore, a social negotiation to sustain diagnosis involves more than the medical professional, when an individual with problems in their living world becomes a patient possessing a medical label. It becomes problematic when medical professional start to talk of symptoms or presenting problems and in this way, for instance, misery is reframed as universal mental health problems, mild to moderate clinical depression, anxiety states and incorrigible offensive conduct or recurrent nuisance id reframed as personality disorders, with madness being reframed as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. This reframing might suit several interest groups beyond psychiatric profession (Seligman 102). The understanding of distress from a bio psychosocial perspective and the way drugs are used in treatment of mental distress The most universal problems that people report and seek counseling for are those associated with fear and sadness. These are usually classed as anxiety or depression if they are diagnosed. In Britain, it has been found that depression and anxiety affect one person in every six individuals every year. However, sadness and fear are not new things and over the past 100 years, a medical scheme has dominated which views them as mental health problems and the connected helping professions of psychotherapy and counseling have developed to work with individuals who are troubled by problematic emotional experiences (Winnicott 78). Antidepressants have been used in treatment of depression to counter the emotions that accompany depression. However, several patients who have been satisfied with antidepressant drug treatments have been misdiagnosed as depressed other than being identified as sad. The side effects of antidepressants pay a substantial role in placebo effect, because patients undergoing treatment interpret the side effects as an implication that the medication is taking action, which substantially increases raises the placebo effect (Pilgrim and Bentall 67-8). Conclusion From the information drawn from the two newspaper articles, it is evident that mental health practitioners are using antidepressant prescriptions in the treatment of people with anxiety and depression. The prescriptions are also at increase because of increased diagnosis of mental health problems and reduced stigma around mental illnesses. However, many people are being unnecessarily treated with antidepressants, especially those experience mild or moderate signs of depression. This is because there is of talking therapy or psychotherapy which effectively works for treatment of depression. Works Cited Winnicott, Donald Woods. Human nature. New Jersey: Schocken Books, 1988. Davidson, R. et al, Fluoxetine, comprehensive behavioral therapy, and placebo in generalized social phobia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2004, 61, 1005-1013. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington DC, 1994. Bentall, Richard. Madness explained. London: Penguin, 2003. Pilgrim & Bentall. Losses & gains of diagnosis. NY: Macmillan Publishers, 1999. Seligman, Martin. Helplessness: on depression, development, and death. W. H. Freeman, 1975. Bauserman, Joseph Morgan and Rule R. Warren. A brief history of systems approaches in counseling and psychotherapy. University Press of America, 1995. Blashfield and Burgess (2007). Issues in Diagnosis: Categorical vs. Dimensional Read More