Health

Key concept affecting people with mental illness

Introduction

Based on the concept presented by World Health Organisation (WHO), mental health can be defined as the state of wellbeing through which individual can realise his or her strength as well as abilities to cope with the everyday stress of life. Mental health offers people with ability to work fruitfully and productively for contributing to their community. Mental illness is associated with different socio-economic, environmental and social concepts that influence the understanding, perception, decision making and experience of people suffering from psychological disorder. This essay is going to identify as well as highlight the key concepts that affect people with mental illness to great extent by affecting their physical, sociological, emotional and behavioural aspects. Moreover, this essay will discuss how these concepts can create both positive and negative effects on people with mental illness. By representing two main theories regarding mental illness such as Orem's Theory and Tidal's theory, this essay will determine the proper ways as well as approached that can undertaken to transform the effect of key concepts on the mental illness into positive as well as productive impact.

According to Spitzer et al. (2018), in case of people with mental illness, social stigma is one of eth important key concept that is attached to mental health. Social bias and discrimination make it harder for mental illness patient to recover. Mental illness is inability of individual to deal with everyday duties due to poor decision-making ability, problem-solving and understanding power. There are many reasons behind occurrence of mental illness such as social, environmental and economic aspects. Some emotional concepts of self-esteem, feelings, confidence and social constraints affect the psychology of people with mental illness. On the other hand, Irvine (2018) argued that mentally ill people are highly affected by the social and socio-economic concepts such as family backup, difficult behaviour, physical illness, and social stigma including discrimination, abuse and bias.

On discussing the key concepts that affect mental illness, Yang et al. (2014), stated that, there are different types of stigma that lead to mental retardation, poor decision-making ability, anxiety depression, hopelessness and loneliness. Stigma is the attitude, perception and behavioural representation of society people in a particular way for socially discrediting something. As stead by Acharya et al. (2017), social stigma of concepts leads to development of discrimination and bias that have severe impact on the mental health of people. People with mental illness are discriminated in such a way that they cannot gather courage to attend any social functions or celebration in society. For example, people with dementia are often bullied by friends, families and neighbour forcing them to leave their home. Sometimes, mentally ill people have to face social abuse such as bullying, harsh attitude of neighbours and taunts that affect their self-confidence, self-esteem and understanding. On the contrary, Masten et al. (2015) argued that social stigma is about not only the abuse, discrimination or bias, but also about the negligence to mental sickness of people, which leads to severe damage of psychological strength as well as physical ability to perform the regular activities. For example, social bullying, discriminations for mental patient compel society members the immediate health needs of mental patient thereby leading to brain damage, inactive body function and unfortunate death of the nerve cells. Social stigma sometimes is associated with the death of the brain cells, which leads to coma, and paralysis of the patient with mental illness.

In this context, Castro et al. (2016) argued that mental stigma is one of the important key aspects that affect that affect the retardation mental ability more than the social stigma. Drug addiction and alcoholism are related to parts of the character as well as behaviour of being stigmatised. Most of the psychological perception regarding mentally ill people is that they may be freckle mind, dishonest, violent and vulnerable. This perception is associated with treating mentally ill people with high level of neglect, abuse and disrespect, which make the situation worse. In this aspect, Mehta et al. (2015) stated that there is some fixed perception regarding the character, behaviour and activities of mentally ill people, which compel the family, friends and neighbour to maintain safe distance from these people. This is the reason behind most people with mental illness are highly prevalent to commit gruesome crimes. In UK, whilst majority of the people with mental illness live peaceful lives, there is some poor socio-economic group in the suburban and rural regions, in which mentally ill people live unimaginable lives. Recent mental health survey by WHO shows that one in four people in the UK suffers from deserves mental health issues. One in 12 people in the UK suffers from a high rate of neglect abuse and mental stigma that nit only damages mental strength but also develop violent as well as vulnerable behaviour in mentally ill individual.

According to Jorm (2015), mental health of people with psychological illness deteriorates due to the stigma that they experience in their family and society. Society has stereotypic generic viewpoint about the mentally regarding their activities and behaviour. Based on eth generic concept of society about mentally ill people is they are highly violent and dangerous. In this aspect, Lucksted and Drapalski (2015) argued that mentally ill people are at high risk to harm themselves rather than harming or attacking other individuals. Based on the concept of Orem’s Theory, each person has self-care requisites, which need to be fulfilled for normal development of mental and physical health. In the case of mentally ill people, they need to be provided with proper support and care to fulfil the self-care requisites that will improve their health and wellbeing. On the contrary, Clement et al. (2015) argued that, current mental health framework needs to improve the perception and stereotypic viewpoint of society regarding mentally ill people who would automatically compel the social workers and society people, to provide the best care and support to people with mental illness. Social, physical and mental stigma worsens the mental health issues of patient by delaying or impeding the chances of getting proper treatment as well as support from society. Social isolation, unemployment, poverty and poor housing are associated with the social, physical and socio-economic concept regarding mental illness. As stead by Link et al. (2017) physical and psychological stigma traps people in the cycle of mental illness and depression.

Physical stigma is based on the social perception about mentally ill people that they would have poor health condition, malnutrition and physical inefficiency to deal with any job. On the contrary, DeViva et al. (2016) argued that in the UK this mental Health Survey by NHS leads to revealing the fact that, most of the mentally ill people have proper brain functions that control the actions and movement of entire body. Moreover, this survey states that mentally ill people can also compete with normal people in terms of dealing with physical activities and work out under proper guidance. Physical stigma engraves the perception regarding eth physical health and efficiency of mentally ill people, which impede them to get any jobs, proper support and treatment. For example, in most of the school, children with dementia and anxiety are restricted to take part in any physical activities and games due to perception regarding their ill physical health. This physical stigma not only develops constraint to get proper support and facilities in society but also create huge distance as well as bias between the mentally ill and normal people. As stead by Holder et al. (2018), there are different types of concept regarding different types of mental illness. For example, for people with dementia and Alzheimer disease, the stigmatisation is different from the people suffering from depression or anxiety. In case of the former condition, there is perception such as these people is unable to take any good decision; they are no more trustworthy as they have short time memory loss and lack of self-confidence. For this reason, family members and society people avoid taking them in any social gathering or functions or parties. In the case of people with anxiety, depression, there is perception such as these people are dangerous, harmful and attacking. For this type generic stereotypic viewpoint, these people have to experience a high level of discrimination, bias, neglects and poor social support from the society people, friends and neighbours.

As stated by Spitzer et al. (2018), there are different factors that exacerbate the condition by developing the aforementioned stigmatisation regarding mental illness. Media is one of the major factors that often show potentials links of violence and crimes with mental illness, which change the general perception of people regarding eth mental illness. Economic, social, and environmental development lead to the creation of groups, competition and violence in the society which not only affect the viewpoint of society about mental illness but also develop the const towards getting proper support and treatments for recovery of mental disorder. For example, due to technological advancement, people are connected all over the world through internet connection (Yang et al. 2014). Through social media and online platform, people get the information regarding offensive activities, awkward behaviour and mental instability of mentally ill people. Through getting this information, perception and concept regarding mental illness deteriorating with development negative viewpoint which spoils the chances of getting proper support, treatment from the government and society. Poor socio-economic condition unemployment and lack of family back up in case of mentally ill people lead to the development of general stereotypic viewpoint o society about behaviour and activities of these people. In some cases, family background, genetic history and economic status affect the perception of society people regarding the mentally ill individuals. For example, most of the mentally ill people who belong to poor economic status and lack of family support, have to experience a lack of proper treatment process. This is because there is perception of health professionals in terms of providing proper treatment process to mentally ill people that, these people will not be able to pay the amount of costly treatment process. Moreover, lack of family support for eth mentally ill individual compels the health professionals to avoid their treatment due to poor chances of interaction within family members and friends regarding the treatment process.

In this aspect stated that treatment of people with poor mental health depends on not only providing the best care, support and healthcare facilities to patient but also improving the key concepts about mental illness. In this aspect, Tidal’s Theory can be applied in changing social, physical and psychological stereotypic viewpoint about mental illness. Tidal Theory is the recovery model for promoting mental health and wellbeing. This theory emphasize on consistent process of change inherent among all people that affect their understanding, feeling, emotions and psychology. According to Irvine (2018), this theory focuses on empowering people with mental illness by offering them positive and producing experience, a supportive environment and continuous encouragement under the guidelines of professionals. Health professionals can use this concept in order to motivate mentally ill people to develop their own positive thoughts, understanding decision-making ability and problem-solving skill. Based on the NICE (National Institute of Healthcare and Excellence) guidelines, health professionals need to focus on the needs and requisites of people with mental illness to make the proper evaluation of their psychological ability. For improving the key concepts regarding mental illness, NHS has set some guidelines for eth society. As per these guidelines, social care homes and mental hospitals need to conduct proper psychological therapies to deal with drug problems, alcohol issues. On the contrary, Acharya et al. (2017) argued that, although NHS sets guidelines for providing treatments and support to mentally ill patient, there is still need to relevant public policies to reduce the stigma of psychological disorders. In this aspect, the UK government has conducted Mental Health Awareness Week from 14 May to 20 May. This process focuses on highlighting the effect of mental illness on people and the needs of mentally ill patient from their society. In this program, the UK government emphasize stress and its effect on the physical as well as mental health of people. Moreover, this program has been conducted to raise public concern as well as awareness regarding the physical, mental and emotional needs of mentally ill people. Mental Health Programs, conducted by the UK government focuses on reducing the stigma of mental illness by improving the concept of behaviour and activities of mentally ill individuals. NHS has taken proper Public Policies in order to protect the adolescent and children from discrimination, bullying and bias. Based on the NHS guidelines of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), school and college authority are compelled to improve their perception regarding the mentally ill children and adolescent. Moreover, children and adolescent would be provided with equal opportunities regarding their education, skill development, training and knowledge development process.

In this aspect Masten et al. (2015) argues that setting guidelines for improving public concern is not enough for reducing the negative concept regarding mental health, rather government needs to focus on proper implementation of all guidelines in well organised to protect mentally ill people from stigma and abuse. in this context, UK government has conduct NHS Mental Health Support services in which health professionals, social workers and carers are appointed to improve the public concept on mental illness by providing online awareness information, leaflets and conducting local awareness campaign. NHS mental Health Helpline Page has a set of guidelines, information and awareness rules that assist the society people to get knowledge regarding reason, types and outcomes of the mental illness. Moreover, NHS online pages assist people to get proper information regarding the emergency seervhec to deal with a mental health crisis (nhs.uk, 2018).

On the contrary, Castro et al. (2016) argues that, policies, campaigns, and guidelines are not enough for changing the key concepts on mental health. Statutory action needs to be taken in terms of developing eth employment, social-economic culture and physical stability in eth community. Through employment generation, education, proper infrastructure and skill development training, the government can make the socio-economic development of eth entire community, which is associated with reducing the alcohol addiction, drug addiction and illegal activities by eth mentally ill people. Moreover, health providers and social workers need to raise concern in families and neighbours of mentally ill people to let them know about the type of support and care the mentally ill individual needs. According to Mehta et al. (2015) for development of proper public concern on mental health, it is important to transform the concept regarding mental health into a positive one. In this aspect, NHS conducts awareness campaign, which focuses on improving the knowledge of local people regarding reason and outcomes of stress, depression and other mental illness. Moreover, UK government emphasize on changing stereotypic viewpoint of society people regarding mental health by conducting the mental health promotional week. This program is based on providing information on mental health, needs of mentally ill patient and duties of the public to reduce the stigma such as discrimination, bias in eth society (nice.org.uk, 2018).

As stated by Clement et al. (2015), development of public concern for reducing the stigma on mental health needs formulation of relevant policies and legislation. In this aspect, the UK government has formulated the Equality Act (2008) and the Mental Health Act (2007). Under this acts, people with mental illness would-be provided with equal opportunities and care in terms promoting their sooner recovery. Moreover, they would be protected from any kind of bullying, discrimination and biases. NHS focuses on implementing the guideline of Mental Health Act (2007) in such a way that would improve the approach and behaviour of society people towards the mentally ill individual. For example, NHS has formulated rules under the aforementioned act for eth health providers and social workers to respect eth opinion, decision and preference of mentally ill people. Based on the guidelines of NHS, teachers, teaching staffs and students in all schools and colleges are obliged to maintain proper positive environmental and polite behaviour towards mentally ill children. Based on the guidelines of Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, mentally ill patient who is allegedly charged with any crime would be provided with proper support care and respect. For improving the perception of society people regarding the mentally ill patient who is involved in crime, UK government has formulated Mental Capacity Act (2005) which describes the mental instability and activities of mentally ill people. Based on the guidelines of this act, social people are obliged to offer a friendly and decent approach towards this mental patient in terms of improving their mental status as well as emotional wellbeing (nhs.uk, 2018).

According to Link et al. (2017), World Federation for Mental Health focuses on improving public viewpoint and key concept regarding eth activities and behaviour of the mentally ill patient. For addressing stigma, UK government emphasize on conducting training, knowledge development programs and campaign in the locality. In these programs, senior health professionals are invited to represent their valuable speech regarding raising public concern ion eth mental illness. On the contrary Clement et al. (2015) argued, campaigns are sometimes are conducted only in the urban and metropolitan places in which the rural and suburban areas are still with the lack of proper awareness regarding eth mental illness. For addressing this problem, NHS is going to conduct the public concern program in the rural locality of London and other UK based regions, in which local people are provided with leaflets and DVDs to understand the mental illness, its effect on health and needs of mentally ill people.

In order to reduce the stigma of mental illness and improving the key concept on mental health, it can be recommended that government needs to take more appropriate policies that cover more people under the knowledge sharing regarding mental health. Moreover, health professionals and social workers need to interact with local people in order to improve their perception regarding mental illness. School and colleges need to train their staffs in proper way in which they deal with mentally ill patient. People with mental illness would be provided with equal opportunities in all aspects of their lives to promote their recovery and well-being.

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that mental illness is the inability of people to deal with regular activities due to poor decision-making ability, problem-solving skill and self-confidence. There are some general stereotypic viewpoints regarding mental illness, which exacerbate the mental illness by developing social stigma. Discrimination, bias and abuse are common types of social stigma that have an adverse impact on the mental health of people. Therefore, it is important to improve the concept of mental health in society by raising awareness through awareness campaign and social development programs. Moreover, the government needs to implement relevant policies that will promote equal rights and opportunities for mentally ill people.

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