Exploring How Personal Accounts of Mental Distress Can Inform Professional Understanding and Benefit the Treatment Process

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Exploring How Personal Accounts of Mental Distress Can Inform Professional Understanding and Benefit the Treatment Process This essay seeks to explore how personal accounts of mental distress

can inform professional understanding and benefit the treatment

process. We begin with a brief outline of what defines mental health,

moving on to look at the similarity and disagreements between

psychology and medicine and the significance this has on how

individuals are diagnosed and treated. It goes on to consider how

professionals might receive personal accounts and how these accounts

may benefit their professional understandings. However, personal

accounts may not give the whole picture therefore, we will consider to

what extent personal accounts provide a misleading or incomplete

picture, and what cannot be known from personal experience alone.

The word mental means ‘of the mind’ – thoughts, feelings &

understanding of oneself and the world around us. The word health

means the ‘working order of the body and mind’. Therefore, mental

health means the working order of thoughts and feelings. For

centuries problems of the mind have been discussed and theorised in

terms of ‘sickness’ inherent in the sufferer. For example, with

regard to schizophrenia, various toxins or chemicals secreted by the

body were implicated as far back as the 19th century by Emile

Kraepelin et al (1883) who postulated a biological basis for problems

of the mind. Throughout the 20th century the ‘medical model’

monopolised the phenomenon o...

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...born from shared suffering and shared hope.

BIBLIGORAPHY

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Hinsie, J & Campbell, R (1970), Psychiatric Dictionary, 4th Edition,

New York; Oxford University Press

Kraepelin, E et al(1883), Lehrbuchder Psychiatrie (1883, 8th Edition

1915), Clinical Psychology

Read, J & Reynolds, J (1996) Speaking Our Minds: An Anthology, Open

University Press

K257 Course Team (1997) Section 1: What is Mental Health, in The

contested Nature of Mental Health, Module 1 of K257 Mental Health &

Distress

K257 Course Team (1997) Section 4: Frameworks for Understanding, in

The contested Nature of Mental Health, Module 1 of K257 Mental Health

& Distress

K257 Course Team (1997) Section 6: Policing the Dividing Line, in The

contested Nature of Mental Health, Module 1 of K257 Mental Health &

Distress

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