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Society and mental illness essay
Society and mental illness essay
Essay on understanding mental health
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Abstract
Mental health is viewed as a deviance in the eyes of society, instead of seeing the importance of mental health and the effects that it has on a person. This paper will examine the importance of how medication can help a mental illness physically but not mentally and how society would rather push medication than alternative measures. It will also examine how society intertwines the action of deviance as having a mental illness, instead of understanding that mental illness can cause deviance behaviors, mental illness is not a deviance behavior all on its own. The paper will focus on the importance of society knowing and understanding mental illness medically, socially, and behavioral and the complexity that mental health as on a person.
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There are studies being conducted on certain ranges of mental health so more information on mental health can be used to better understand mental disorders and the importance of mental health. With the expanding of the knowledge of this field, they are finding and creating a medication that can help with certain mental disorders, and are able to diagnosis a mental disorder better. Medicine can help and cure so many illnesses and diseases which is why doctors are more often to medicate the patient as the only form of treatment. Nowadays psychiatry has shifted much of its attention away from the use of psychotherapy and group therapy and towards genetic explanations of mental disorders and drug-based cures …show more content…
Patients who had good insights and who also did not perceive much stigmatization appeared to do best on use of various outcome parameters while those who those with poor insights were found to have problems with service engagement and medication compliance(). This is a good example of how the stigma of medication causes people to not want to take their medication or get therapy treatment because they do not want to appear as a freak. People who do go to therapy or are medicated have a higher chance of becoming more confident and healthier at
1. The main thesis of the article is that deviance means going against the social norms. Social norms are also different for which person. Rosenhan says that pseudo patients are never detected as sane because each staff member has a confirmation bias. The setting of the mental hospital confirms their bias and they read each behavior from every patient and taper the behavior to fit the diagnosis.
The stigma and negative associations that go with mental illness have been around as long as mental illness itself has been recognized. As society has advanced, little changes have been made to the deep-rooted ideas that go along with psychological disorders. It is clearly seen throughout history that people with mental illness are discriminated against, cast out of society, and deemed “damaged”. They are unable to escape the stigma that goes along with their illness, and are often left to defend themselves in a world that is not accepting of differences in people. Society needs to realize what it is doing, and how it is affecting these people who are affected with mental illness.
From the very beginning of the article, Solomon expresses his views on how such horrific disasters can be controlled and avoided if it was not due to the flaws in society. Starting from the title of the article, Solomon lets his readers understand that incidents such as that of Aaron Alexis’s are avoidable by using the phrase “Avoidable Tragedy” (Solomon). With this strong title, Solomon guides the readers towards the idea of stigma and how mental illness is directly attached to a strong social stigma. Stigma, which means disgrace, has a powerful negative affect in the society. The stigma that society imposes upon mental illness “causes them [people] to hide their mental-health status from those around them” (Solomon). With this statement, Solomon is trying to get across the idea that society’s corrupt thinking of the negative and spiteful outlook on mental illness is causing people to hide their troubled mental health from everyone. This leads to tem n...
Continuing budget cuts on mental health care create negative and detrimental impacts on society due to increased improper care for mentally ill, public violence, and overcrowding in jails and emergency rooms. Origins, of mental health as people know it today, began in 1908. The movement initiated was known as “mental hygiene”, which was defined as referring to all things preserving mental health, including maintaining harmonious relation with others, and to participate in constructive changes in one’s social and physical environment (Bertolote 1). As a result of the current spending cuts approaching mental health care, proper treatment has declined drastically. The expanse of improper care to mentally ill peoples has elevated harmful threats of heightened public violence to society.
Mental health issues are pervasive in todays society. Individuals diagnosed with severe mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, have a diminished wellbeing due to the stressors associated with their illness. Whether these psychosocial aggravations are an internalized manifestation of poor self esteem, societal renunciation, or subjective distress, it is evident that mental illness is a stigma on the individual dealing with the disorder, as well as a strain on societal resources. While reliance on psychotropic medications and psychosocial interventions have traditionally been a common treatment plan, many argue that the overuse and inappropriate prescription of drugs in the treatment of mental heath is creating a larger problem than
Psychopharmaceutical medications is a form of drug treatment used in order to invoke a change on the mental state of the user. This form of treatment is widely used in the world of mental health in order to alleviate patients of the symptoms of the mental illness which they are suffering from. Individuals understand psychiatric medications as a form of help that they receive from their physician in order to “normalize” their lives. Often people suffering from mental illness find it hard to concentrate, keep stable relationships, maintain their personality, maintain their energy levels, etc. Psychiatric medication treatment can reduce such symptoms causing issues in their daily practices and increase a person’s ability to pursue their interests,
Mental illness is more common than one would like to believe. In reality, one in five Americans will suffer from a mental disorder in any given year. Though that ratio is about equivalent to more than fifty-four million people, mental illness still remains a shameful and stigmatized topic (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.). The taboo of mental illness has an extensive and exhausting history, dating back to the beginning of American colonization. It has not been an easy road, to say the least.
The discussion of mental health is slowly being brought to the social surface to create a more inclusive society for those dealing with a mental illness. However, those with a mental illness are continuously being affected by stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination by those who simply don’t comprehend the complexity of the human brain (Glaser, G.2017). As more people become mental health activist, they are exposing the plethora of issues surrounding the overall mental and physical stability of those who are negatively affected by the social construct of what it means to be normal.
Psychiatry is a medical field that deals with the diagnoses, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. The FDA is constantly approving drugs for psychiatrists to use that are supposed to help with in their practice. For example, Michael Levin-Epstein, who wrote the article “A New Way to Deliver Psychiatric Meds: Drugs for ADHD and Major Depression Now Can Be Delivered with Skin Patches,” shows how pharmacotherapy is continually being advanced by new ideas and approaches. However, Psychiatric drugs are not always the answer. Prescriptions are not a good remedy when it comes to the overcoming of a mental illnesses, because there is not enough information regarding the effects of the drugs, pharmaceutical companies are driven by profits,
Race, by definition, refers to biological characteristics of individuals as reflected in their physical appearance (Lyndonna Marrast, David U. Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler, 2016) Contrary to popular race, the concept of race is not something that is intrinsic to human nature; in other words, it is an aspect of society that has been socially constructed with the intention of separation and segregation. Usually, those that are placed into racial categories are associated with certain prejudices and biases that are the result of multiple stereotypes that are perpetuated in our society; for example, there are multiple stigmas of African Americans in today’s society. As a result, this has allowed for the development of a specific way of
An estimated 61.5 million American Lives, or one in four, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, and it takes a decade, on average for them to make contact with a health care professional (Pending). One in 17 Americans currently live with chronic mental illness disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder (pending). Despite the new discoveries and advances in science and technology, the social stigma of mental illness prevails. Why is mental illness an issue? Why should healthy people be concerned if their neighbor suffers from acute depression? Those are the questions that the average American faces. Yet, our society remains naïve when it comes to mental health. The roots of this issue are found in the lack of information and lack of mental health accessibility.
Thus this process allows medical profession to go beyond the role of healing the sick to become arbiters of the drawing of boundaries between normal and deviant-those who do not conform or act in smilar ways as the general public. Thus this aptly illustrates Becker’s (1963) labelling theory that 'social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance'. By framing deviants as violating rules constructed by social groups, we inevitably label them as ‘outliners of society’. Hence we say that deviants are successful being labeled. This is greatly manifested in the realm of mental illnesses
The tragic events that have struck the United States of America in recent times can be due to psychotic behavior by individuals who suffer from some sort of mental illness. This type of behavior can be directly associated with having a severe mental disorder. Indicating or detecting whether people are suffering from mental health problems or not can be very hard to do. Mental health has so often been denied of existence because people don’t believe it is a real health problem. There has been a negative connotation and stigma attached to mental health that has prevented the world from appropriately dealing with it and its causes.
Mass media “references to people with mental health problems found more than four in ten articles in the press used derogatory terms about mental health and nearly half of press coverage related mental illness to violence and crime” (Esseler, 244). This is causing for people to look down upon the mention of mental illnesses and many times ignore the importance of confronting this issue. Therefore the importance of removing this stigmatization is crucial. Education allows to make more informed decisions and then changing the perception of mental illness can lead towards policy changes toward the improvement of mental health (Sakellari,
Our society today does not value our mental health like it should. If society would only pay as much attention to mental health, they would be better off in the long run. Think about an athlete playing a sport, they certainly understand how important physical health is. When a baseball player injures his knee, he is out and waits until it heals. But like many people, mental health is overlooked. Most teenagers do not realize that the many things like stress or eating disorders are coming from a poor mental state. They think that if they just ignore it they will snap out of it, this is not true and many times this kind of thinking will only make it worse (Change Your Mind). Mental health is not seen as important as physical health due to misconceptions and stigma behind mental health patients. By increasing the importance of personal mental health, people can reduce issues associated with mental health problems and raise awareness for people who suffer from mental health issues.