‘The value of objective and subjective evidence in understanding mental health conditions’

Explain how mental ill health may be indicated through an individual’s emotions, thinking and behaviour?

Mental illness is a disorder that is considered to be a type of interruption in a person’s emotions, thoughts, or behavior. Mental illness signifies to a wide variety of disorders which can range from mild distress to impairing a person’s ability to function in daily life. Signs and symptoms of mental illness can vary, depending on the particular disorder, circumstances and other factors. Whether a behavior is considered normal or abnormal varies on the person’s situation surrounding their behavior. Throughout history there’ve been three overall beliefs for the causes of mental illness. These three theories are known as supernatural, somatogenic, and psychogenic. Each one of these stands for how one is viewed when seen as having a mental illness.

The strengths when working with clients on a medical model perspective is that the use of the DSM provides a common language to use in the medical community. The DSM provides reliability and structural guideline to each mental disorder. The structural guidelines in the DSM provide an organized list of criteria and specifiers to help determine the severity of the mental disorder. When diagnosing a client, there are many similar signs and symptoms to each mental disorder; thus, the DSM provides the clinician information about differential diagnosis, prevalence, possible co-morbidity, age of onset, and progressive development of symptoms. Hence, focusing on the medical model and using the DSM can be beneficial to both the client and the clinician providing treatment.

Once you have followed the guidelines, you can then come to a decision if or not your patient holds mental capacity.

She is thorough in what she does and uses her prior experience and skills when interacting with her patients. She obtains a comprehensive psychological report on each client and draws decisions from the history obtained from the assessments.

In contrast, the adaptive features of these behaviours are more obscure even to the individuals themselves. Often they can not explain the real reasons for their behaviour because the reasons are outside of their conscious awareness. In fact, if they were aware of what motivated their behaviour, they could possibly change it, either through their own efforts or by asking for help and getting support from therapists or friends and family. Therefore the presence of a symptom signals that the individual has an underlying conflict.

There hope is to diagnosis and treat the illness at hand. This article questions the validity of diagnosing each patient. If the doctors or the nurses’ diagnosis is wrong then, the treatment will also be wrong. This can create complications for all parties at hand. Most often there is protocol that most doctors have to follow when diagnosing a patient “However, it should not be forgotten that they are all using same diagnostic manual, and probability of diagnosing a person is in depression with same instructions.”(). Now this makes a person question whether the validity is of the doctor or the protocol. If it is the protocol than that is something that needs to be evaluated. At the time the DSM system was in use for diagnosing a patient. At the time of this experiment Rosenhan used the DSM-II statistical evaluation. Years later this statistical data was look over, “According to Mattison, Cantwell, Russell, Will (1979) general inter-rater reliability of DSM-II was about %57 and %54 for axis I in DSM-III. In DSM III, which is published twelve years later after first version of DSM II, reliability scores of psychosis, conduct disorder, hyperactivity, and mental retardation was slightly higher than general reliability scores; however, as it is accepted today with the circumstance of logical base, reliability under 0.7-0.8 is found questionable and possibility of error is

must be on the patient rather than on an assumption about the nature of the patient’s problem and on arbitrary decisions about actions to be undertaken (Alligood, 2010).

Relates to a person’s physical or mental health, the provision of health care, or the payment for health care.

The overall physical examination will also reveal a patient health statues, in making a depression diagnosis.

Speker and Scully (2008) stated that the Act sets out decision specific standards that define the assessment of capacity and best interest principles to improve the decision making for patients that is believed to lack capacity. The Act put out the justification that patient undergoing serious treatment must have an independent mental capacity benefactor in the absence of any appropriate person to consult in determining the client’s interests, underpinning the legal significance bestowed on the patient’s rights, autonomy, liberty, and empowerment. If there is no independent

The medical model focuses on the molecular structure of drugs and indicators of mental or emotional disorders. However, the medical model is not effective treating mental and emotional disorders. The medical model indicts the notion that abnormal behavior is the product of physical problems and be treated medically. The medical model depends upon independent tests to demonstrate or contradict if a patient is ill. The psychological model uses tests to demonstrate or contradict whether a patient is ill. It is at this point of agreement that the two models separate. A restriction to the psychological model is if a patient that is unconscious, or their communication ability is compromised to the degree that they are

Analyzes the assessment data to determine diagnosis or issues. Formulates age-appropriate, culturally and ethically sensitive plan of care.

Decision making and best interests of the patient in the care for people with mental health problems are one of the main concerns in nursing practice. Healthcare professionals should be knowledgeable enough to practice the legal code regarding decision making and protection of the patient with mental health problems (NMC, 2008).

Becoming acquainted with a potential client’s history, personality and present concerns is necessary in forming a foundation for counseling interventions. This information gathering phase is referred to as assessment (Mears, 2010). While some mental health professionals will use an interview as their primary assessment tool, others will utilize testing