Mental Health Evaluation Paper

31 y/o AA male patient seen today for psychiatric-mental health assessment. He is awake, alert and oriented x4. He is calm, cooperative and follows commands during assessment. The patient reports he is depressed, difficulty sleeping and nightmares at night. The patient explained his depression is as a result of deep thinking from a news he received two days ago from his elder brother that his mother is ill. Stressors identified by the patient include losing his job a week ago before the news about his mother; his wife is 6-months pregnant with their first child, who currently works part-time at her present job; patient relates difficulty paying monthly bills and inability to provide adequately for his family as a man. The patient denies mood swings, suicidal/homicidal thoughts and ideation. Patient reports his spouse is at work at the moment and he does not want to put stress on his wife due to her current condition. Patient denies been hospitalized for depression or psychiatric illness; and denies family history of mental illness. Patient reports he is seeking help because he does not like feeling this way using terms of “helpless and loss of worth from his spouse”. Patient reports he needs help with his depression and nightmares before his current condition get out of hands and ruined his marriage.

Suicide is a controversial topic that is effecting more and more people everyday. People all around the world have to undergo stress and anxiety as a result of a difficult situation. It was found that people who take care for their chronically ill family members, go through extreme stressful and anxious behaviour. Along with this stressful and anxious behaviour, people succumb to the unfortunate result of mental health problems. Mental problems was not only found with people who have ill family members, but also with people who have instability in their lifestyle. Over the years, suicide rates have increased by sixteen percent. Commissions are trying to find indicators of suicide and about how people are dealing with this mentally. The commissions

Type of suicide: The risk assessment first point must be included in the assessment. The patient or family members must be asked about the types of suicide attempts the patient may have plan to make or have made, was there any access to means of suicide like guns or medication, or any behaviour which showed the preparation of the suicide.

In order to determine the specific challenges of disaster mental health (DMH) responders, Hambrick et al conducted an audit. The data was gathered through semi-structured group interviews using open ended questions with nine clinicians at various Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC). All CMHCs had a disaster response team who completed at least six hours of Psychological First Aid (PFA) training. The PFA guide that was consistently reference is a guide used to direct posttraumatic distress caused by a disaster. The interview content consisted of questions about the organization they represented, the needs of the organization, and phone interviews asking about barriers of DMH at the organization they work. The purpose of this experiment

This week clinical I felt better prepared than I did with my first week. I was able to focus a lot more on interpersonal skills and develop therapeutic relationship with my patients. In terms of Mental Status Examination (MSE), this assessment provided me with a helpful base of information from which to observe changes, progress, and monitor risks. Especially, suicide risk assessment is a gateway to patient treatment and management. The purpose of suicide risk assessment is to identify treatable and modifiable risks and protective factors that inform the patient’s treatment and safety management requirements. I got insight into how important it is to document suicide risk assessments with sufficient information. Documentation of suicide risk assessments facilitates continuity of care and promotes communication between staff members across changing shifts. It is easy for suicidal patients to “fall through the cracks” of a busy psychiatric unit that has rapid patient turnover of admissions and discharges, and mostly during shift change. Asking question such as “What is your view of the future?” or “Do you think things will get better or worse?” helped me to elicit important information regarding patients suicidal ideation. Additionally, how my patients expressed their hope about the future assisted me to identify, prioritize, and integrate risk and protective factors into an overall assessment of the patient’s suicide risk and include in MSE.

Because I work in an hospital that cares for populations at great risk for substance abuse and untreated mental issues and disorders, I get to see patients that have, or at some time will try to commit suicide, I would like to take this opportunity to learn how to properly assess the community, to help those in need, and to educate their families and friends to look for, and recognize signs that can prevent suicides, toward this end, it is important that I have the necessary knowledge to assimilate the information in this study, in a manner that will provide greater benefit not only to my

Univariate regression testing was used for data analysis and positive responses to suicide screening questions were associated with acute hospitalization and repeat ED visits. The RSQ is a valid screening tool and the research found that a 36% of participants were hospitalized as a result of the positive screenings and 29% had one or more ED visits within the following year (Ballard, et al.,

Natural and man-made disasters, crises, and other trauma-causing events have become a focus of the clinical mental health counseling profession because of the need to help people who experience such events and who may develop psychological disorders that arises from them. PTSD is a crippling outcome of many of these disasters and accounts for a large percentage of the major effects to not only those experiencing the disaster first hand, but also to the first-responders and members of the affected communities (Satcher, 2007).

Citing seminal study by (Teasdale & Engberg, 2001), Brenner et al (2009), noted that hospital admission records revealed that “incidence of suicide among

The article specifically identifies the person who collects the data as “a doctoral level clinical psychology graduate student,” and is qualified and trained to work in the field (DeJong et al, 2010). Researchers use various instruments to collect specific information about suicide attempters and suicidal completers such as Suicidal checklists and Risk-rescue rating scale. Suicidal checklists gather information regarding patient’s “suicidal behaviors, life stressors, and historical variables” (DeJong et al, 2010). Risk-rescue rating scale is also used to rate the lethality of suicide attempters. With the result from Risk-rescue rating scale, the researchers classify the suicidal attempters into two groups: low-lethality and high lethality (DeJong et al, 2010). Even though the instruments are identified in the method section, researchers do not thoroughly describe the instruments. It would be appropriate to further discuss the type of scale, the outcome of scores, and the meaning of scores in

Both Howard and Jonathan were victims of maltreatment at the hands of their mother. There is very little information provided about both families so my primary role would be to assess Howard and Jonathan and their family members interpersonal and concrete needs and link them to appropriate informal and formal supports in the community. According to WHO (2006), “all forms of child maltreatment can have significant and lifelong adverse effects on the child’s mental health and development.” Linkages to community mental health services, or in home therapeutic support services for both boys and family members would be beneficial. “Mental health interventions that show the greatest

Arrays of tools, treatment and practices have been developed for use during a clinical consultation to help determine suicidal thoughts, concerns and behaviors (James, 2013). Within the tools developed determinant conditions and preindication signs are identified (Montague, Cassidy & Liles, 2016). The succeeding section will distinguish and outline risk factors, suicide hints and suicidal assessment that are designed to gauge suicidal thoughts, concerns and behaviors (Montague, Cassidy & Liles, 2016).

Clinicians take many factors into account when trying to predict a patient’s probability of committing suicide. These include but are not limited to substance abuse, family history of suicide, previous suicide attempts and hopelessness. In particular hopelessness has emerged as one of the strongest predictors of suicidal intent. Patients rated on the Hopelessness Scale (HS) are given a score out of 20, this score reflects the potential for committing suicide, (0-3 none) (4-8 mild) (9-14 moderate, may not be in danger but needs regular monitoring) (15-20 severe, definite risk of suicide). In the article, Hopelessness and Eventual Suicide: A 10-year prospective study of patients hospitalized with suicidal ideation, Beck et al. followed up on

Profile of the Participants in the Study with Reference to the Four Suicide Probability Scale (SPS) Categories

In this study, total of 4000 patients were involved (p.80). Suicide however is an infrequent incident which requires bigger sample size with longer follow-up to evaluate the risk fully. Minimizing variation is often an advantage in a study with a smaller sample size but also means the results cannot be apply to the whole population. In addition, this study used a longitudinal measure where the researchers need to firmly know the condition of the patients in between the years in order to make a reliable conclusion of their study (p.80). One problem that was often faced is the patients’ withdrawal from the study at times. This leads to reducing amount of data collected, decreased in sample size and the validity of the study will be questioned. In this situation, researchers frequently turned to retrospective study where it involves considering historical information such as medical records. Last but not least, this study also lacked of prior research studies. It was observed that there were no reliable contradicting researches where it proves that SSRIs do not lead to increase in suicidal risks in children and adolescents.