The Practice Of Assertive Community Treatment ( Act ) Outside The United States

Schizophrenia is affecting people more now than a few decades ago. This illness is across the US and is present in every culture. People are now aware and understand how the illness can be devastating to one’s life. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder of the brain but it is highly treatable. In the US the total amount of people affected with the illness is about 2.2 % of the adult population. The average number of people affected per 1000 total population is 7.2 % per 1000, which means a city that is consists of 3 million people will have approxiamately 21,000 people suffering from schizophrenia. People with mental illness should seek early treatment to be stabilized with medications. During a 10 year period 25% of schizophrenics

The prevalence of schizophrenia is thought to be about 1% of the population around the world. The disorder is considered to be one of the top ten causes of long-term disability worldwide. Late adolescence and early adulthood are periods for the onset of schizophrenia. In 40% of men and 23% of women diagnosed with schizophrenia, the condition manifested before the age of 19 (Addington, Cadenhead, Cannon, 2007).These are critical years in a young adult’s social and vocational development.

By taking the time and educating ourselves, we are eliminating possible misconceptions about the illness. Working with people that have a mental disorder is the best way to understand how and why they act the way they do. While the cause of schizophrenia is still unknown, it is believed that both genetics and environmental factors play a role. Schizophrenia consists of five subtypes; paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual. Symptoms can range from hallucinations to delusions, and disorganized thinking. Since there is no cure for schizophrenia, treatment is aimed at controlling the positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. By starting with a single antipsychotic medication and evaluating the efficacy in four to six weeks, they are able to determine if that medication will work or if they need to try a different one. Once they find out what works, they must adhere to it. Through improved public awareness society can break the pervasive stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illnesses that stand in the way of finding cures and help people with schizophrenia lead full lives they

Throughout the many years, there have been many negative public perceptions of Schizophrenia, which is known by majority of the public as an indication of mental illness. This disorder is most of the time perceived by the public as caused by psychological factors. People with this mental illness are considered to be unpredictable and threatening (Angermeyer & Matschinger, 2003, p. 526). Most patients have a behavioural dysfunction. Victims, families and society carry a substantial burden due to this illness (Wood & Freedman, 2003).

Florida Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) is a program that provides comprehensive community counseling to individuals diagnosed with a debilitating mental illness. It is federally funded by the State of Florida Department of Children and Families and serves a clientele of 100 clients in the Volusia and Flagler County areas. It is a derivative of the Program of Assertive Treatment (PACT) which was developed in Wisconsin in the 1970s when deinstitutionalization was a major practice in the mental health field. This outpatient program is rehabilitation and recovery oriented. FACT is unique in that it is the only service available that offers a housing, medication, and flexible funding subsidy to enrolled individuals which help to

Participants were recruited from the inpatient ward in a psychiatric facility in a metropolitan city with the following inclusion criteria: (a) those who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by a psychiatrist based on the

Lastly, they propose recommendations, these are based on the outcome of their reviews and analyses, which include: effecting and requiring enforcement of policies already in existence, decreasing the number of individuals with untreated SMI by changing outpatient commitment specifications, which would require close monitoring of patients’ compliance with treatment, thus reducing the overall number of SMI individuals becoming involved in the criminal justice system at all. They also recognized the need for evidence-based programs, and additional research to investigate the actual effectiveness of MHC’s and public mental health services.

Individuals with Schizophrenia typically use medications to treat his or her symptoms. This paper will examine one newspaper article about research conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health and three peer-reviewed journal articles. This will be done in order to investigate if Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) aids in minimizing symptoms of Schizophrenia more effectively with medication, without medication, and in combination with other therapy styles. These articles propose that CBT should be examined with caution in order to comprehend how it impacts Schizophrenic symptoms. The effectiveness of CBT and reduction of Schizophrenic symptoms could differ in each individual. This is due to numerous factors such as, socioeconomic status, gender, race, environment, family history, and exposure to drugs. It is important to be aware that with every scientific study that is conducted, there may be errors within the study. This may be due to how the data was collected.

There is a considerable amount of different concepts that can be used when thinking about schizophrenia; unfortunately, since it continues to be a misunderstood disorder, there also exist numerous misconceptions about the schizophrenia. The most common misconceptions deal with the treatment options for schizophrenia, the potential recovery rate, and the ability of people who are diagnosed with the disorder or symptoms to live productive and meaningful lives. Though there are no permanent cures to treat the disease, there are certain medications that help manage the symptoms in order to help people lead healthy and satisfied lives. The recovery rate for the disease is also

Schizophrenia is a disease that has plagued societies around the world for centuries, although it was not given its formal name until 1911. It is characterized by the presence of positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are so named because of the presence of altered behaviors, such as delusions, hallucinations (usually auditory), extreme emotions, excited motor activity, and incoherent thoughts and speech. (1,2) In contrast, negative symptoms are described as a lack of behaviors, such as emotion, speech, social interaction, and action. (1,2) These symptoms are by no means concrete. Not all schizophrenic patients will exhibit all or even a majority of these symptoms, and there is some

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a mobile out-reach treatment model for adults who suffer from mental health illness. A community based, individualistic support program, ACT is designed provide the same type of support and treatment a patient would find in a clinic (McAuliffe. W. E., 1990). The program considers circumstances of why an individual became homeless and aims to provide mental health care along with vocational training to find a job and stable housing (McAuliffe. W. E., 1990). ACT is based on the health belief model of behavior change. The stages of behavior change are employed by counseling sessions that address mental health symptoms and encourage self-efficacy through coping skills and job training.

Schizophrenia is a life-long disorder that affects about one percent of the population (Mueser & McGurk, 2004). The cause of this mental illness is still unclear. Studies have suggested that Schizophrenia does not arise from one factor but from a combination of genetic, environmental, and social factors (Liddle, 1987). People diagnosed with Schizophrenia struggle to deal with a multitude of symptoms that make it difficult to function (Mueser & McGurk, 2004). Antipsychotic medications are a popular treatment of the symptoms of Schizophrenia (Mueser & McGurk, 2004). Research is constantly being done to develop these medications to enhance the quality of life of those diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a universal mental illness which is both complex and devastating. Schizophrenia generally begins in the early stages of life and may lead to lifelong disabilities (Moritz, 2010). The context of this paper shall include an introduction on schizophrenia as well as the reasoning this discipline was chosen. It will include a critiqued research study that will explain how the research was presented. The primary focus on the research study will be a literature review, the methods used, the results found, and a presented discussion.

Taken at face value the constructs appear to be valid, but the content of the schizotypy construct is somewhat questionable. I attribute this to my gross oversimplification of a complicated construct. Similarly, at a glance, it is obvious that there may be issues with the validity of our measure of schizotypy. The survey wouldn’t be as definitive as medical diagnoses or simple assessment from a mental healthcare professional. We could rectify this by having participants that are indicated to be high risk assessed by a professional as well, but this would likely be an expensive undertaking. Since the research project is hypothetical we don’t have to adhere to a budget, but assuming the survey is validated by outside sources before we implement it there shouldn’t be a need to assess the participants

This paper, broken into two sections, includes a mock case study of a young woman, from the movie Black Swan, who meets criteria for a Schizophrenia spectrum disorder, followed by current research on schizophrenia and recommended treatment. Because specific temporal information is unavailable and the key difference between schizophreniform disorder and schizophrenia is duration, the diagnosis made for the purpose of this paper is schizophrenia. The research portion will cover current research and treatment of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a disorder defined by a heterogeneous set of irregularities across multiple modalities, including “cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dysfunctions” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p.100). This mock case study is an important reminder for counseling students: Client symptoms may not always be transparent to clinicians. Clients may purposefully withhold information, lack insight to report, or may have sufficient factual insight to avoid the perceived stigma of reporting.