Understanding Mental Health and Mental Illness Essay

In my culture, society looks down on mental illness, and when news of mental illness gets out in the society, one’s reputation is pretty much destroyed. My elder brother, Imran, was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was a teenager. My family was still living in Bangladesh at the time, and my brother’s illness was treated as a secret by my parents. My parents went above and beyond to hide my brother’s illness because we come from a culture that is quick to condemn parents for their children being abnormal. My family felt very protective of the fact that we had mental illness in our family. Family visitation and guests in our home were strictly monitored by my mother and my siblings, and I was coached to make excuses for my brother. My brother’s illness shaped me as a person because I realized that I needed to be able to overcome the obstacles life throws in my way in order to take care of my family.

Summarise and discuss the presentation of mental health in the two newspaper articles given in Appendix 1

173 of my 173 Marian sisters are full of dignity. I see dignity every day in the hallways. Marian girls know they have to fulfill Rights and Responsibilities, because having dignity requires that. We also show Option for the Poor and Vulnerable in all of the service hours we do to help those less fortunate. Overall, we show Solidarity and stick by each other despite any awful tests, lengthy homework assignments, or sicknesses. From these girls I have gained the most influence as to who I am today.

Within our society today, there is a continual debate over the topic of mental illness. Mental illnesses are events that plague the lives of over 18% of adults in the United States, and as much as 450 millions people worldwide. These beasts and burdens handicap the lives of so many that it is simply breathtaking. Not only has this topic been prevalent within our society today, but it also is a recurring point brought up in many classic works throughout literature. Some of these timeless tales include Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman.

Mr. A reported he met his developmental milestones and walked at age 1 years old. He also did not experience any learning delays. He report being able to adapt and was involved in complex skills at an appropriate age. There were no know history of childhood or mental illness. His birth and infancy were normal.

Another issue people with mental illness face is comorbidity of illnesses. Due to the fact that mental health and physical health are conjoined, comorbidity of other illnesses tends to occur when mental illness goes untreated, or vice versa. One study estimates 25 years of life are lost for each person with a serious mental illness, which is commonly attributed to illnesses like cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Shim & Rust, 2013). On top of that, further data shows that when compared to people without a mental illness, people who are mentally ill receive less attention to comorbid issues, and an overall lower quality of care (Smith et al., 2016). One example of receiving an abnormal level of attention during a doctor visit could be referred to as diagnostic overshadowing, which is when a person’s mental disorder diagnosis overshadows physical ailments (Kassam, Papish, Modgill, & Patten, 2012).

This essay demonstrates that Mental health is a major problem in society, it is growing day by day and if it is not approached immediately, it can lead to permanent disability and death in Australia and worldwide. ‘A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person 's thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning’. (Online 2014) thus people who are affected by it has a great chance of growing serious health hazards which has an impact on changing a person’s perceptions of everything around them from positive to a negative, bleak and can be the most disadvantaged in the community.

.Significant advancement in the obtaining of knowledge about mental illnesses has greatly improved doctors’ abilities to make sure they are diagnosing the correct disease as well as their ability to come up with treatment options varying from person-to-person rather than treatments that follow the “one type fits all” concept. This new knowledge has led people to believe that these disorders are not resulting from a sin but instead are due to physiological and environmental problems. These developments led to better lives for individuals struggling with various diseases, and may result in a cure, as society hopes. Thus, as the world is starting to learn more about mental illness, it has allowed us to gain a greater picture on why mental illnesses

There appears to be a common outlook on mental illness. Not only are mental illnesses one of the most complex and difficult health issues with many unknown elements to the various kinds of mental illnesses to this day, but they are also one of the most stigmatized. Often times, individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses do not understand themselves many of the symptoms they may be experiencing. Doctors and researchers are still uncertain about many treatments, symptoms, side effects, types of disorders, and more. Furthermore, the media portrays the mentally ill in very extreme and hostile ways. It is no surprise that our society has a tendency to avoid or even fear what it does not understand. This is very much the case for mental disorders.

In the article Barkway explores the development of the idea and the definition of ‘mental health’. She explains it through the actualisation of the issue, observation of the definition transformation, and the current results of the mixing of concepts ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’.

Mental health is a condition that affects people’s way of thought, relating to others, and mood. There are hundreds of different types of mental disorders, in which are all not easy to cope with. Studies have shown that twenty-five percent of adults, and ten percent of children suffer from mental illness at some point of their lifetime. Stigma plays an additional role in people’s lives leading to discrimination, and setting apart as a stereotyped group. Mental health is a wide topic that individuals struggle with when it comes to diagnosis, treatments, and living their everyday lives.

Deinstitutionalization, which occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century cause adequate mental health services to be insufficient for the mentally ill population. Mentally ill individuals were send back to society despite of their prevailing circumstances. The lack of assistance made mentally ill individuals to commit a high percentage of crimes due to their state of mind. Mentally ill individuals who had committed crimes were being incarcerated instead of forcing them to receive mental health treatment. According to Schneider (2008) the percentage of mentally ill entering the Criminal Justice System has increased 10 percent per year over the last decades. The rapid increase of mentally disorder inmates has caused prisons to obtain the responsibility for mentally ill individuals and provide them with basic mental health services. However, prisons are not providing the adequate mental health treatment which in result causes mentally ill individuals to continue with their insane behavior after prison time. The recidivism rate is higher than 50 percent among the mentally ill prisoners who are released (Collins, 2015). The revolving-door- like fashion system which causes mentally ill inmates to return to prison indicates that the need to provide services outside of those institutions for offenders is necessary. Mentally ill individuals have continuously increased in prison population because courts have been implementing the idea that criminals should receive

There are many mental disorders that have different effects on people and are sometimes determined to have had an influence in some crimes. If these mental illnesses are truly what caused the perpetrator to act out on these crimes, do they deserve to receive the help that they need and are there any solution to help deter future crimes involving the mentally ill? If so, fixing the problem could prove to be difficult, the community should assume a portion of the responsibility in the finding of a solution to help not only the mentally ill but also protect anyone on the other side of these crimes.

MightSight was an interesting disruptive idea. The mental health market is growing and is continuing to be a hot topic, an app that places control in the hands of the customer sounds viable. Group 37 made it clear how Millennials would feel about their data being available on mobile, but I would have been interested to understand how Group 37 would have overcome the obstacle, via their branding, about how people would feel about being implanted with a chip.

Depression is a serious issue that countless people struggle with; therefore the majority of physicians and doctors try to develop drugs, or new counselling techniques to help defeat this terrible foe, but perhaps neither of these solutions are the answer to defeating depression once and for all. Pam Houston suggests another solution in her short story “A Blizzard under Blue Sky”. Houston’s story begins with the narrator being diagnosed with clinical depression, yet she refuses to take medication offered by the doctor to help her overcome depression. Rather than taking medication, she decided to go winter camping, because she says she loves the natural world because “it gives you what's good for you even if you don’t know it at the time”