Factors Influencing Mental Health
Mental health is an elusive but necessary concept which could be defined as the state of well being that enable individuals to be fruitful and able to behave normally (Rogers & Pilgrim, 2014). Therefore, mental well being is a crucial factor for each individual in order to live a peaceful life. However, mental illness like any other medical illness affected mental wellbeing and destabilize the associated lifestyle of individuals (Seeman, 2015). Mental illness from minor symptoms to severe psychotic disturbance can influence the lifestyle of individual including their beliefs, attitude, and feelings (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). There are certain factors that influence my personal opinion, believes, attitude towards people with mental illness (Lê Cook et al., 2014) . As a student, my contribution to patient care is very limited for that patient who has the mental illness. However, my personal opinion, social surroundings, religion believes holds a huge position in influences my opinion about the individuals with mental health. During my placement in the mental health department of Australian care, I spent approximately three weeks and I was surprised when I came to realize that each individual has very unique psychological and social circumstances that influence their mental illness. Therefore, those individuals who have serious mental issues such as schizophrenia, bipolar, major depressive disorder have the different emotional response to some kind of stimulus (Chung, 2017). My perception of mental health also shaped by media, social and digital which influences the opinion for those individuals. In many places, mental illness is regarded as the problem of individual only also have the consequences that in turn influences my opinion of mental health.
When I was very young, I saw a neighbor of mine, she was suffering from schizophrenia. She used to talk to her and usually become very paranoid when confronting any human being. She had very difficult cognitive behavior and hallucinate many things. I realized that an individual’s self-esteem, relationship with family members and surrounding helps influences the mental health. Therapeutic communication is more important in curing mental issues than medicine administration (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). Therefore, when I would interact with them I would be more compassionate, I would show empathy, I would be focusing on individual needs and do not stereotypy their situation.
Social media has a huge impact on shaping the public opinion of the masses (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). They can form of modifying any opinion of individuals in a different way depending on the objective (Schomerus et al., 2016). The frequency of using Different social networking site such as Face book, twitter increases rapidly. Therefore, the social media influences the individuals in the mostly negative way and has a positive impact (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). After seeing several posts of individual people, I tend to become more stereotypic about certain mental illness and which in turn offend the people with whom I interact on the daily basis. A serious of myth, which severe only to quarantine the mental illness from the rest of the society are considered as the stigma. Therefore, social media made me believe certain social stigma that influences my opinion on mental health. Previously, I used to believe that depression is not a disorder but a state of mind since everybody was posting something on the social media about the depression and their consequences. After going through certain evidence-based journals I realized that depression is a major psychological disorder which requires medical assistance otherwise have serious consequences. Therefore, social media influenced my opinion in a more negative way.
Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
In a post of my friend in 17th October 2017, I saw my friend wrote that her sister was possessed by some evil or demonic entity. Moreover, she was behaving weirdly such as she was talking to her self-alone, she had disorganized speech and lack of proper cognitive behavior. She was mostly delusional and hallucinate things, which does not even exist. For many days, I thought that it was some demonic possession, I asked people about such symptoms. I stereotyped the depression as the similar kind of mental illness due to my personal experience and thought that it might be depression. The confusion continued for many months until I came to know from a textbook that it is a severe mental disorder called schizophrenia where an individual requires serious medical treatment and therapeutic communication. Therefore, social media has negative influences on the opinion since I became stereotypic and used to believe in stigma. However, social media disrupts many of my wrong conception of mental good health such as depression is also a mental illness and can be cured effectively by appropriate communication and therapeutic treatment.
The mental health issue is one of the issues experienced by the majority of the individuals in Australia (Park, West & St, 2015). Due to the complex nature of the psychological disorders, successful treatment often requires regular access to mental health care professionals and variety of support (Ogloff et al., 2015). A recent study by, suggested that 1 in 5 Australian aged from 16 to 85 years experienced the mental disorder in previous years (Stefanik et al., 2017). Unfortunately, there are certain barriers that hinder the accurate mental health patient-centric care. The first barrier is the personal belief of the individual that influences the response to the treatment (Townsend, & Morgan, 2017). A significant number of individual believes in traditional treatment and refuse any other treatment, which might be best to cure their mental illness (Hatch et al., 2018). Since the individual with the mental illness are more vulnerable and therefore feel offended if the health care professional approaches them in different ways (Bartlem et al., 2016). Therefore, it is very difficult for me as a health professional to provide accurate treatment to them by motivating them and boosting self- esteem (Ogloff et al., 2015)..
In this context, as a health professional, during providing care, I will be culturally competent and approach my patient in such a way that they feel culturally safe. I would be more compassionate while providing the care; I would empathy when they narrate their area of concern to me. The individual usually lack self-esteem, confidence in mental illness. I would arrange a motivational therapy session where an individual would point out one factor that motivates them in their life. I would engage them in social activities and encourage them in interacting with an individual which will, in turn, boost their self-esteem and install hope.
Mental Health in Australia
During, the course my point of view on mental health changed in a different way. I came to know that every individual has different mental makeup so every mental illness is unique to that person. I came to know that physical wellbeing is related to healthy mental health. Moreover, I gained the information that mental health can be cured by accurate therapeutic treatment such as compassion, empathy and seeking help from a health professional can reduce the risk factor of health.
Many topics addressed during the course that shaped and enhances my knowledge as mental health professionals. Out of the entire topic, mental health associated with physical health shaped my approach to my future services and approach to the client with mental illness (Ogloff et al., 2015). Mental health concerns the emotions thought process and behavior of the individual. I understood that a person with good mental health usually cope up with everyday challenges and lead healthy lives (Ogloff et al., 2015). However, a minor health problem can affect the daily activities and individuals are not able to function properly (Hatch et al., 2018). Therefore, in order to cure any physical health problem, it is important to consider the mental health of the individual (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). There is certain physical illness such as cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease are related to mental health such as depression (Bartlem et al., 2016). Hence, while providing care to any patient, I would build a therapeutic relationship with my patient in order to know their narratives would provide my client the information of the preferred medication for the best treatment (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). I would negotiate my time in discussing the issue with the patient and their decision to the adherence to the treatment. Since physical illness is related to mental illness, I would focus on physical health as well which might give rise to mental illness or visa-versa. Patient with mental illness requires empathy and compassion in order to cope up with life. Therefore, I would be more empathetic towards patient while providing the care and I would be culturally competent while providing the care so that the patient does not feel uncomfortable while they seek help for the health professional.
Lastly, to conclude, mental health is the serious issue that destabilizes the normal lifestyle and gives rise to other health obstacles. Therefore, for providing help every professional should be skilled enough to consider the physical health while providing care.
References:
Bartlem, K., Bailey, J., Metse, A., Wye, P., Wiggers, J., Clancy, R., & Bowman, J. (2016). Health behaviours in people with mental illness: prevalence, interest in change, acceptability of careJacqueline Bailey. European Journal of Public Health, 26(suppl_1).
Chung, C. L. (2017). Factors associated with mental health service utilization among young adults with mental illness(Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University).
Gibbons, R. J., Thorsteinsson, E. B., & Loi, N. M. (2015). Beliefs and attitudes towards mental illness: an examination of the sex differences in mental health literacy in a community sample. PeerJ, 3, e1004.
Hatch, A., Hoffman, J. E., Ross, R., & Docherty, J. P. (2018). Expert Consensus Survey on Digital Health Tools for Patients With Serious Mental Illness: Optimizing for User Characteristics and User Support. JMIR mental health, 5(2), e46.
Lê Cook, B., Wayne, G. F., Kafali, E. N., Liu, Z., Shu, C., & Flores, M. (2014). Trends in smoking among adults with mental illness and association between mental health treatment and smoking cessation. Jama, 311(2), 172-182.
Ogloff, J. R., Talevski, D., Lemphers, A., Wood, M., & Simmons, M. (2015). Co-occurring mental illness, substance use disorders, and antisocial personality disorder among clients of forensic mental health services. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 38(1), 16.
Park, G. R., West, A. G., & St, N. A. (2015). About Mental Illness.
Rogers, A., & Pilgrim, D. (2014). A sociology of mental health and illness. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Schomerus, G., Angermeyer, M. C., Baumeister, S. E., Stolzenburg, S., Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2016). An online intervention using information on the mental health-mental illness continuum to reduce stigma. European Psychiatry, 32, 21-27.
Seeman, N. (2015). Use data to challenge mental-health stigma: web surveys of attitudes towards mental illness reveal the size of the problem–and offer a way to find fixes, says Neil Seeman. Nature, 582(7582), 309-310.
Stefanik, L., Ameis, S., Mulsant, B., Malhotra, A., Buchanan, R., Rajji, T., … & Voineskos, A. (2017). SU85. The Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Social Cognition in Youth With Mental Illness. Schizophrenia bulletin, 43(suppl_1), S191-S192.
Townsend, M. C., & Morgan, K. I. (2017). Psychiatric mental health nursing: Concepts of care in evidence-based practice. FA Davis.
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