Mental Health And Health Care

The lack of treatment for mental illnesses — due partly from the stigma with which it is associated with — comes with a number of public issues: economically,

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.

According to the World Health Organization, mental illness will affect approximately 25% of people at some point in their life (“WHO Qualityrights”, n.d.). Despite that, the current mental health care system in the United States is inadequate. Many aspects of the system need improving, especially the barriers to service. In fact, approximately 20% of individuals are left without necessary treatment for their mental health disorder (“Mental Health”, 2016). Mentally ill individuals have difficulty accessing necessary mental health care services for various reasons; insurance, socioeconomic status, and mental health stigma can all function as barriers to treatment. Insurance discrimination can make it difficult for individuals to find treatment (Han, Call, Pintor, Alarcon-Espinoza, & Simon, 2015). Gaps in insurance coverage can also be a barrier, as they disrupt the long-term treatment process (Gulley, Rasch, & Chan 2011). Socioeconomic status has been found to negatively affect appointment scheduling (Kugelmass, 2016). Finally, stigma in our society can also stop people from seeking out treatment that they need (Bathje & Pryor, 2011). The mental health system in the United States is not capable of caring for the mentally ill, as insurance, socioeconomic status, and perceived stigma all act as barriers that prevent people from receiving the treatment they need.

In the United States the Mental Health Care field is one of the most underserved areas of healthcare. The mental healthcare field faces many challenges to the proper treatment of patients from both a societal and professional standpoint. From a societal perspective a negative stereotype is associated with patients seeking psychiatric care. Patients seeking care are often labeled as defective or damaged. Add in the complication that most patients with mental illness appear to be normal, accepting that someone is ill without outward symptoms can also be difficult for a society to understand. From a professional perspective the challenges within the mental health care industry include personal prejudice, staffing issues, and problems with coordinating care. The combination of these factors has a direct negative impact on the willingness of individuals suffering from mental illness in seeking the care needed to treat the symptoms of mental illness.

In a study done in 2007, titled Perceived Barriers to Mental Health Service Utilization in the United States, Ontario and the Netherlands (Sareen, Jagdeo, Cox, Clara, de Graaf & Stein) it was reported that attitudinal barriers frequently cause Americans to not seek care for mental health issues. These barriers include thinking that the mental illness will fix itself and not believing that psychiatric care is helpful (Boyd, 2011).

Mental illness has been the most overlooked issue in society today let alone within prisons. Researcher Lurigio (2001) explored studies from the 1970’s through to the 2000’s on the deinstitutionalization and restructuring of mental health laws that basically channeled the mentally ill into the corrections system. Often mentally ill offenders are released into community care. Lurigio emphasized that community based care “compartmentalizes” mentally ill offenders and creates limitations on whom they treat. This creates yet another gap within the corrections system for offenders to fall into. Those who require treatment may not get what they need because community care can only treat so much. These “missed” offenders are often the most serious and chronic.

Social work practice is a profession which requires many knowledge-bases which overlap in different contexts. Mental health is a knowledge-base that social workers must acquire in vast quantity and quality, as it can appear in any health and human service in which they work in. The ability to work with those with mental illness within health and human service is paramount. This requires the capacity to work with and within the individual’s environment, recognise, comprehend and respond, with appropriate and relevance to present and foreseeable needs and impacts.

Access to mental health care is not as good as than other forms of medical services. Some Americans have reduced access to mental health care amenities because they are living in a countryside setting. Others cannot get to treatment for the reason of shortage of transportation or vast work and household tasks. In some areas, when a

Nursing education includes theoretical studies and clinical experiences which cannot be substitute with other. While starting my nursing career as a student without any previous experiences in mental health, I also have the same attitude as general people where mentally ill people are vulnerable, dangerous, unpredictable, and to some degree responsible for their own illness. Initially, I was not fully prepared, anxious and stressed to start the course. After studying mental health, I found what is mental health, what are the causes of mental illness, disease type, a severity of diseases and as being nurse how can we treat mentally ill people. Hence, after studying mental health, my perspective towards the mentally ill patient is totally changed and feel more comfortable to deal with mental illness.

Implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs) for the treatment of psychological disorders represents a major challenge within the field of mental health. Literally hundreds of evidence-based treatments (EBTs) and thousands of evidence based assessment (EBA) tools are available; however such practices are generally not implemented in routine clinical practice (Chorpita et al. 2014 presentation; Weston, Novotny, & Thompson-Brenner, 2004a; 2004b; Strupp & Anderson, 1997). For example, clinicians implement self-report measures in 18% of sessions and structured clinical interviews in 1% (Sattler et al). Furthermore, clinicians implement key components of EBTs for common disorders in just 22% of sessions (Whiteside et al).

Mental Illnesses have plagued our society for centuries. In fact, it is a more common disease than people realize, “Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year.” (Nami, org). Despite the prevalence of mental illnesses, the stigmas associated with them are still very strong to this day, this is a result of the deinstitutionalization of mental healthcare facilities. Many Americans who suffer from mental Illness do not receive treatment, “Only 41% of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year. Among adults with a serious mental illness, 62.9% received mental health services in the past year”

There is a severe lack of understanding about mental health throughout many communities throughout the country. Because of this, many people do not accept the fact that mental illness is a genuine struggle that many people face on a daily basis and, as a result, most do not understand how widespread it is, particularly for adolescents. According to recent research, 10-15% of teenagers have experienced some symptoms of depression, roughly 20% percent of teens will experience depression before they reach adulthood, and adolescents who suffer from depression are twelve times more likely to attempt suicide. . One health behavior thatis extremely important is receiving medical and psychological treatment for mental illness. However, because mental health is still a taboo issue within many communities, there are many risk and protective factors that need to be taken into consideration. Evaluating these using the five levels of the social-ecological model—individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and public policy--explains how individuals are affected by themselves, their relationships, their community, and their society as a whole.The first level of this model is the individual. One of the largest risk factors of individuals seeking treatment for mental illness is the difficulty of self-identification. Adolescents are surrounded by a variety of pressures, so oftentimes the individual is unable to detect that he/she is struggling from mental illness. If the individual

Mental health providers utilizes many forms of research from the interventions that they use to provide care to their clients all the way to the assessment’s that they use to gauge the level of satisfaction of their clients with their services and how effective their services are in regards to their overall mental health wellness.

Going beyond the duties of a social worker, we find that there numerous avenues that can hinder a person from choosing to seek help for their mental health illnesses. It was found that less than half of young people with a mental disorder obtain treatment (Campo, Bridge, Fontanella, 2015). Differing cultural backgrounds was also found to have an effect on whether a person seeks

The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”. Common mental disorders include anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, drug and alcohol dependency. The trigger for these mental disorders can be social, economic, culture and environmental factors. In Low and Middle income countries(LMIC), it is estimated that 76 to 85% of people with severe mental disorders do not receive treatment for their mental health conditions. (Demyttenaere K, 2004). This is referred to as ‘Treatment Gap’(TG), that is difference between the number of people with mental health disorders and the number of those people who can access appropriate services.