Reflection Paper On Mental Health Disorders

The Narcotics Anonymous meeting which I attended was named 7 Days of NA which was located on 1212 North Wolfe Street at an organization called Dee’s Place. Just as the Alcoholic Anonymous meeting previously attended, the location appeared to be in a covert and quiet place to hold a support group. We entered through the rear entrance, which seemed to be staged that way to secure participants identity. As before at the last support group I attended, I searched around the room to see again, a 12 steps guide posted on the wall, a relatively thick NA ‘Basic Text’ textbook on the desk of the facilitator and this

For the self-help meeting in regards for my reaction paper, I attended a Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meeting. NA is a nonprofit, community-based, 12-step recovery organization for recovering drug addicts (Bowens, 2011, p. 1). The meeting I attended took place outside on a Saturday afternoon at Magnolia Park in Garden Grove, California. It is an open-group tag meeting, where one speaker will tag another person to share and welcome for anyone to attend. It was very easy to locate the meeting, as it was right in front of the park’s only parking lot with members sitting in a circle on benches and lawn chairs. The meeting started at 12:00pm and ended around 1:30pm.

The first meeting that I attended was a Narcotic Anonymous meeting. The meeting time was 7pm-8pm on September 13, 2016. The group was made up of 12 individuals, 4 females and 8 males. The overall feeling of the group illustrated positive energy. Each person gave the perception that they truly wanted as well as needed to be there. I did observe that most of the participants depicted a very high anxiety level based on their body language and the tone in their voices. There were no “new comers”, which is the terminology used for a person who is new to the world of Narcotic Anonymous. The dynamics of the group, included persons who were in recovery as well as persons whose addiction is still active.

Narcotics Anonymous is a support group using the same principles as Alcoholics Anonymous but designed for individuals addicted to narcotics (Fortinash & Holoday Worret, 2012). The programs emphasize both personal responsibility and mutual accountability by means of a social model recovery program which is peer-driven. Recovery Kentucky utilizes care and change as their foundation for the peer-driven model. Participants are often reminded the program is not just a pit stop for drug and alcohol use but a commitment to change the whole body, mind and spirit. They are required to attend community meetings and complete a twelve step program where the client will acknowledge the problem, recognize a solution and develop a plan of action that will support the ultimate goal of sobriety (MIC Program Description, n.d.).

I had the pleasure of having Mental Health Clinical in Big Spring and Lubbock, Texas. Over the course of the semester I attended 6 clinical dates, all of them demonstrated different mental illnesses that people are affected with. I was able to witness patients in different settings like in their bedrooms, in the general sitting area, in class, and in one on one interaction with the providers. It was a very different experience compared to clinicals for Medsurge or Foundations. Although, I was very intimidated and nervous about going the nerves got better towards the end of the semester. It was a very neat and eye opening experience; many people don’t realize how many people are affected with mental illnesses and the impact it has.

Last night, I attended a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. This was not quite a new experience for me, be my late father was an alcoholic and narcotics addict that died of cirrhosis later on in my life this is why I identified myself with them. Narcotics Anonymous is a fraternity or association where there a recuperating addicts and their main purpose is stay clean. Consequently, the member of this fraternity were well-groomed, yesterday was ice cream sticks day where they had a keyword written on a little piece of paper, such as “perseverance”. Anyone can be a narcotics or alcohol user.

It not easy to determine how many people suffer from mental illness. This is due to the changing definitions of mental illness and problems classifying, diagnosing, and reporting mental disorders. There are social stigmas attached to mental illness, such as being labeled "crazy," being treated as a danger to others, and being denied jobs or health insurance coverage. These negative connotations keep many sufferers from seeking help, and many of those in treatment do not reveal it on surveys. Some patients do not realize that their symptoms are caused by mental disorders. Even though more is being learned about how the brain works a lot of information has still yet to be discovered, thus mental health professionals must continually reevaluate how mental illnesses are defined and diagnosed. The Surgeon General 's report estimated that roughly 20% of the United States population was affected by mental disorders and that 15% use some type of mental health service every year. Community surveys estimate about 30% of the adult population in the United States suffer from mental disorders.

The meeting for Narcotic Anonymous that I attended was at 7:30 pm on March 09, 2017, at the Rolling Hills Baptist Church Fairfield, Ohio. The meeting lasted one hour and a half and approximately 50 people attended (approximately due to the fact that people kept constantly coming in and out of the meeting), the census was a mix of males and females from diverse ages. A group of three students attended the same meeting, we wore our Miami University badges at all times and arrived a few minutes early in order to introduce ourselves to the leader and the group in general. The group leader was a twenty eight years drug free member, as the meeting started he asked anyone who is under the influence or who had drugs on his/her possession to leave

Narcotic Anonymous throughout the country hereby the twelve steps and traditions of Narcotic Anonymous. The twelve steps of narcotic anonymous are: 1. To admit that they are powerless over their addiction, and their lives are unmanageable. 2. They believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity. 3. A decision is made to turn their will and their lives over the care of God as they understood Him. 4. They made a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves. 5. They admit to God, to themselves and to another person the nature of their wrong doings. 6. The readiness of letting God remove the defects in their characters. 7. To humbly ask God to remove their shortcomings. 8. Make a list of people they harm and make amends to all of those people. 9. To make direct amends to

In my entire life I have never felt so grateful for a program for changing my life around. If it weren’t for these people being part of this amazing Narcotics Anonymous program I would not be here talking about this kindhearted group of people. My life was a total mess, before it was like if I had no future for myself and felt like my head was not attached to my body. These people in the NA program has been generous the only thing I had to do is have that desire to stop using. The hardest thing for myself to do was being able to enter that meeting for the very first time.

Narcotic Anonymous is a twelve-step group that allows narcotic users to meet with others who have the same problem. It is a group that allows an individual to have support from another individual who has been or is going through the same thing. The objective of these meetings is to help individuals become and remain clean (na.org). I was able to observe one of these meetings. The meeting I attended was at The Meeting House, which was in Point Pleasant at St. Paul’s Church. The meeting commenced at 7:30 p.m. and completed at 8:30 p.m. The physical environment was in a nice place, but I thought it was weird to have it across from Fruth’s, Rite-Aid, and a doctor’s office behind it. The meeting room was in the basement of the church. They had

Narcotics Anonymous, or NA, is a twelve-step program much like the more popular Alcoholics Anonymous. NA maintains that all members of the group are important in the unity of the group and that in no way does one individual rule over another. As a person in recovery and member of NA I have learned, through literature, meetings, and my sponsor, that NA is built upon an egalitarian model. A study done by Jeffrey K. Snyder and Daniel M. Fessler has determined that NA is an egalitarian organization that is unique in that “brings into stark relief the conflict between egalitarianism and the social dynamics of knowledge transmission.” By this Snyder and Fessler mean that because of the process that keeps addicts clean is based on gaining knowledge

NA is a community twelve based program (The Science of Drug Abuse & Addiction , 2013). Also, Narcotics Anonymous attenders were found to have more involvement with the criminal justice system, greater lifetime drug use, earlier age of first alcohol use, and prior treatment attempts than non/infrequent attenders (Davey-Rothwell, 2008). However, NA may benefit form supportive fellowship and from sharing with those experiencing common problems and issues (The Science of Drug Abuse & Addiction , 2013). (Meyer & Quenzer, 2013) If attending a twelve step program on daily basis, one is more likely to have a positive outcome (Davey-Rothwell, 2008). Treatment truly depends on how badly a person wants to start a new sober

Before I took this course, I had a very vague understanding of mental health. I’ve heard of disorders but didn’t understand what causes them or how people suffering with disorders thought or how they felt. I learned a lot about things I thought only existed on television or in movies, such as hydrotherapy or electric shock therapy. It was crazy to read and learn about some of the medieval treatments that used to be in place as treatment for the mentally ill. Another thing I thought was very interesting was the inkblot test. I’ve seen it being used in movies but never knew the purpose of it. Going through this course I had a lot of “that’s why they do that” moments. I think a lot of times people can be insensitive to people with mental disorders and think their acting and putting on a show for attention. So, I found it very interesting learning about how there is physical evidence that there is a difference in brain function in people with disorders. I know for myself before this class seeing and hearing about people with depression it was easy to think why are you letting stuff get to you so easy. Or why don’t you just brush it off and let it go and choose to be happy. I made the mistake of thinking it was a choice of theirs to either pick being depressed or choose to be happy. After going through this course, I now know that is far from the truth. I now know it’s not a choice and things like genetics can play a major role in it. Other disorders I’ve heard about but didn’t

The section where I learned the most and gained the most knowledge were the sections about the theories. We discussed different types of psychological perspectives that are used to understand and treat mental health problems. In the beginning of the semester, we learned about the psychodynamic perspective, the humanistic perspective, and the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) perspective. In addition to this, we recently learned about the multicultural/feminist perspective. Before this class, I was previously introduced to the psychodynamic perspective through other psychology classes. However, although the psychodynamic perspective was thoroughly discussed in my previous classes, the humanistic perspective, CBT perspective, and the multicultural/feminist perspective were never taught.