Introduction:. People With Mental Illness Are At An Increased

One of the biggest contributors for poor healthcare is the stigma against mental health. This stigma allows healthcare providers to view those with a mental illness as having low relevance, thus creating disinclination towards providing adequate resources and/or care. This negative stance, based on misinformation and prejudice creates those that have a mental illness to lose their self confidence. Because of this loss, people with mental illness decide not to contribute to their health or livelihood. In the past fifty years, many advances have been made in mental healthcare. However, with the attached stigma, many people choose to not seek out treatment.

For the purpose of this essay the author sought to explore PDSA cycle and identified health promotion in mental health patients as an area for service improvement. It is evident that the life of patients suffering from psychosis, mood and behaviour disturbances is failing. Tranter et al (2012), Happell et al (2013) and Robinson and Potts (2014) suggest that these patients suffer from various physical health conditions such as coronary heart disease, respiratory problems, diabetes and cancers which consequently leads to a reduced life expectancy of 10 -20 years compared to the general population. According to Tranter et al (2012) there are three types of interventions which can be used to improve the health and wellbeing of patients suffering from mental illness. They are assessment of physical health, health education or promotion and multimodal interventions. Roberts and Bailey (2013) suggested that adherence and engaging individuals with these interventions is a major

People with mental illness often go undetected, undiagnosed, and untreated in primary care settings. The mental health stigma contributes to how primary care decisions exclude and overlook mental health as an integral part of patient care (Corrigan, P. et al., 2014). Past research revealed that at least one third of primary care patients with psychiatric disorders escape detection (Jones, Badger, Ficken, Leeper, & Anderson, 1987). As a result, current researchers assert there are increasing concerns about how behavior health contributes to the physical health of people. Alarming figures indicate that people with serious mental illness have two to two and a half times higher mortality rate than the general population (Iyer & Young, 2015).

One of the main arguments for mental and physical wellbeing receiving the same funding and attention is that mental health can impact physical health drastically (and vice versa). There are various ways in which bad mental health has been shown to be harmful to physical health, mental issues account for 23% of burdening diseases in the UK, these issues also have a dramatic effect on life expectancy. Mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia have been linked to heart disease and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, approximately 24 million people suffer from schizophrenia and over 350 million people have depression worldwide. People suffering from serious mental health issues also often experience high blood pressure and high levels of stress hormones therefore an

Whereas comorbidities associated with diabetes are preventable such as hypertension, lipid abnormalities and obesity, the lack of data for the additional comorbidity of mental illness, often overlooked by health care providers, potentiates the development of comorbidities. According to Dickerson, Wohlheiter, Medoff, Fang, Kreyenbuhl, Goldberg, Brown and Dixon, (2011) patient reported data for mental illness, with 9 to 14 % having schizophrenia and the remainder comprising bipolar disorder and depression, have twice the risk to develop diabetes.

Whereas, comorbidities associated with diabetes such as hypertension, lipid abnormalities and obesity are preventable, the lack of data for the additional comorbidity of mental illness, often overlooked by health care providers, potentiate the development of comorbidities. Dickerson, Wohlheiter, Medoff, Fang, Kreyenbuhl, Goldberg, Brown and Dixon (2011) reported data for the connection between mental illness and diabetes risk, with 9 to 14 % having schizophrenia and the remainder comprising bipolar disorder and depression, have twice the risk to develop diabetes.

This will encourage the person with a mental illness to re-enter society and help promote their recovery. Risks that can have a social impact on recovery include; stigma and discrimination, medication side effects, social exclusion and alienation, sexual abuse and victimisation, societies fear of mental illness, poverty, and racism. These risks are at a societal level and affect a person with a mental illness more so than the general public as they are already vulnerable (Tickle, Brown, & Hayward, 2012).

This development intervention strategy will propose a vision for mental health improvement, with the aim being to improve overall health care provision for mental health sufferers, The objective will be to work alongside the five-year forward plan. Therefore this will include evidence based recommendations for interventions to constitute the vision of this proposal. The application of the visions mentioned below will be highlighted under the recommendation section. The recommendations will be established by evidence based research and will be proposed to be implemented by the end of the five-year forward plan. Finally, the employment of the recommendations will be performance measured via active methods (public reporting of performance) to

To understand the importance of treating mental illness ourselves, we must first understand how just a few mental illnesses can affect individuals in a variety of ways. Certain mental

Mental health problems are considered to “interfere with how a person thinks, feels and behaves” (Australian Government Department of Health, 2007, para. 3). Considered to be more prominent, yet less severe than mental illnesses, mental health problems are experienced for

Prevention Mental Health Screening is broadly defined by NCBI as “…a two-part process that first identifies risk factors or early phenotypic features (behaviors, bio-markers) whose presence in individuals makes the development of psychological or behavioral problems more likely, and then segments the relevant subset of the population to receive a unique preventive intervention” (NCBI, 2009). Mental illness is also desribed as a term that “… has been expanded to include natural ills to which the flesh is heir” (Behan, 2015 pp 248).

Improvement in quality of life for people suffering from mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression) has recently been shown to have a correlation with increased levels of physical activity (1). Treatment approaches have begun to favor increased levels of physical activity to assist in symptom management as well as emerging evidence for an improvement in physiology (1). A major barrier for this approach however, is the motivation of people suffering from mental illness to participate in increased levels of physical activity. When compared to the general population, people suffering from mental illness have a

Mental disorder can have devastating effects on an individual and family as well as the society at large. Mental disorder is an overall term used to refer to several specific disorders which include; clinical depression, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder. In Australia, the mental and substance use disorder contribution to the burden of disease has been reaffirmed by the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study. In response to this, the Australian government has undertaken prevention and early intervention measures in addition to use of mental health services. The collection of data on the prevalence of mental health disorder within the country’s population has been widely done by use of population based surveys research method. The effect of the mental disorders and its extent to the population has propelled the health practitioners to come up

The article The Impact of Lifestyle Factors on the Physical Health of People with Mental Illness: a Brief Review by Susanne Stanley and Jonathan Laugharne argues that people with mental illness are more likely to experience poor physical health than the general population. People with mental illness are at increased risk of health diseases and metabolic disorders. Researchers analyze how lifestyle factors impact the overall health of people with mental illness. The article describes the importance of the research, because people with mental disorders have a high rate of mortality due to lack of support from healthcare and community resources.

According to Roger Walsh, a psychologist at the University of California, mental health professionals are relying more and more on medication to treat mental disorders. Walsh argues, however, that most mental disorders can be effectively treated by having a client make simple changes to their lifestyle. Lifestyle medicine, the branch of medicine dealing with the treatment of disorders by having a person change their way of living, focuses on how therapeutic lifestyle changes (including exercise, diet, recreation, relaxation, and service to others, just to name a few) affect psychopathology. In this setting, psychopathology refers to the collective features of clients’ mental health. Therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLCs) can be especially beneficial for clients who engage in unhealthy habits that may factor into to mental disorders. In fact, unhealthy lifestyles contribute to both poor mental health and poor physical health. Many serious, potentially deadly diseases today, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer are strongly impacted by a person’s lifestyle choices. In this paper, however, the focus will be on the effects of TLCs on mental health.