An introduction to mental health
"An introduction to mental health" provides an overview of the various factors that contribute to mental well-being, including biological, psychological, and social influences. It explores the prevalence of mental health disorders and the importance of early intervention and treatment. The introduction also emphasizes the significance of promoting mental health awareness and reducing stigma surrounding mental illness.
6 Key excerpts on "An introduction to mental health"
- Dominic Upton(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as: a state of well-being in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. In this positive sense, mental health is the foundation for well-being and effective functioning for an individual and for a community. (WHO, 2007). In the evolving global definitions of health, the World Health Organization emphasised the importance of mental health to overall health, claiming that there can be ‘no health without mental health’. Mental health problems can range from the worries we experience as part of our everyday life to those that are more serious and cause more long-term conditions. People with mental health problems can experience problems in the way that they think, feel or behave, which can affect their relationships, work and quality of life. It has been estimated that one in four British adults experience at least one diagnosable health problem in any one year. Key message Mental health is an integral and essential component of health. 8.3 Classification of Mental Health The historical roots of the classification system lie in the work of Emil Kraepelin in the early twentieth century. He grouped together numbers of existing diagnoses that all appeared to have certain signs and symptoms that when present together warrant designation as a ‘disease’ or ‘ syndrome ’. This went on to form the basis of the classification systems seen today. There are two diagnostic classifications used to diagnose mental illness; the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (APA, 2000), and the World Health Organization’s ICD-10: International Classification of Disease (WHO, 1992)...
eBook - ePub- Anthony Curtis(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 Introduction to Health Psychology Defining health psychology Historical perspective on health and illness The biomedical model The biopsychosocial model Psychology and health Models of behaviour change Summary Welcome to the fascinating area of health psychology! This text aims to provide an insight into the many fields that make up health psychology. You may be a student, nurse or other practitioner in the health field, or just seeking to find out more about your health and the role that psychology can play in understanding health states and health status. I hope that this book is of interest to you and relevant to your needs. Defining Health Psychology In trying to define health psychology, one must first try and define what is meant by ‘health’ as a concept. The most commonly quoted definition of health is provided in the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO, 1946): Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This definition is considered to have positive and negative attributes by Downie et al. (1996). In the first part of the definition, they argue that health is seen in positive terms (i.e. the presence of a positive quality: well-being). In the second part of the definition, health is viewed (in a negative sense) as involving the absence of disease or infirmity (themselves negative in connotation). Taken together, the definition implies that true health involves both a prevention of ill-health (e.g. disease, injury, illness) and the promotion of positive health, the latter of which has been largely neglected. Banyard (1996) has criticised the above definition on the grounds that a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being is very difficult to achieve in reality and that the definition ignores wider social, political and economic factors which may contribute to this state...
- Robert Brown(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Learning Matters(Publisher)
...Medical frameworks see mental health problems as similar to physical illness. This leads to classification of mental disorders and a regime of treatment which relies heavily on the use of medication. Psycho-educational approaches often have a biological view of causation but also recognise that, as with physical illness, social and environmental factors interact with the illness. Some approaches emphasise the importance of stress and lead to treatments which include work with the emotional atmosphere in families. Behavioural frameworks These suggest psychological problems are acquired through learning experiences and are then affected by various punishments and rewards from social interaction. Treatments might include systematic desensitisation (e.g. with phobias), behaviour modification (e.g. to remove rewards which are maintaining problem behaviour) or cognitive-behavioural approaches (which would include helping people to modify their immediate cognitive response to potentially upsetting situations). Cognitive-behavioural techniques have recently gained some ground within psychiatric practice in Britain. Psychodynamic approaches An individual’s emotional experiences (especially in early childhood) are seen as the primary cause of later problems. Treatment often focuses on bringing memories of these early experiences into consciousness and thereby enabling the person to deal with them in a way that empowers him to be more autonomous. Some theorists (such as Freud) emphasised the importance of sexuality and an inability to resolve sexual feelings within a family. Treatment often focuses on the therapeutic relationship and the concept of transference (e.g. the patient transfers feelings from earlier relationships on to the therapist)...
eBook - ePubPsychology and Social Work
Applied Perspectives
- Gabriela Misca, Peter Unwin(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Much contemporary social work is concerned with risk assessment, the rationing of resources and managing performance to budget, but it is important that social workers are curious and have insight into the nature of the clinical interventions being experienced by their clients. All social workers need counselling skills, but they also need some additional understanding of the skills and interventions which colleagues may be employing in working towards common goals of rehabilitation or improvement in mental well-being. Definitions The applied field of clinical psychology is preoccupied with understanding, defining and identifying mental health disorders in people. Clinical psychologists use different theoretical frameworks to understand how mental illness is caused and how mental illnesses are classified and identified or diagnosed and treated. Their aim is to reduce long-term psychological distress and to alleviate its associated problems in individual ability to function, and they work mainly within health and social care settings with individuals presenting with, among a range of other conditions and issues: mental health problems (such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia) physical health problems (chronic physical illness with a significant mental impact, such as cancer) personal and family relationship problems. Clinical psychologists try to help people to understand their thoughts and behaviours, and in this respect it is important to distinguish them from psychiatrists, who are medical professionals whose main interventions for clients with mental illness involve the assessment and monitoring of medication regimes. In the UK, mental health provisions are delivered by multidisciplinary teams of professionals, who provide a range of skills...
eBook - ePubPsychiatry in Britain
Meaning and Policy
- Shulamit Ramon(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 Introduction The introduction will outline the framework and dimensions of the study. It will also spell out what this project does not attempt to do. The book is concerned with the interface of meanings given to psychiatric phenomena and their translation into policy decisions. It is written from the perspective of a social scientist interested in the theory and practice of psychiatry and their relationships to the social context in which they develop. Throughout the book “psychiatry” or the “psy complex” are used in the wider sense, i.e. to cover not only psychiatrists but also allied professionals and all mental distress experiences. When a particular profession or mental distress category is focused on, it will be specified. In the following exposition of approaches to the subject matter of psychiatry and throughout the book no attempt will be made to assess the truthfulness of any school of thought. Approaches are treated here as social products, which are a given in a particular moment in time but which have been and will continue to be modified by processes of cultural construction. Consequently, no attempt will be made here to present the evidence for and against an approach because the study is concerned primarily with meaning and policy. The term “scientific” will be used only to denote the type of science employed within a specific approach or when a claim to scientific status is made by its protagonists. Instead, a set of criteria by which to evaluate the contribution of each model will be outlined, based on what the author considers to be the essence of mental distress and its social significance. Mental distress is perceived as a phenomenon which incorporates elements of our social and natural worlds. By virtue of being a human condition it is likely to be affected by and to have an effect on our minds and bodies. Our understanding of reality is mediated by the social context in global and specific ways...
eBook - ePubDiagnostic Cultures
A Cultural Approach to the Pathologization of Modern Life
- Svend Brinkmann(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 7 Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Mental Disorder In this chapter I ask how we should define and approach not just psychiatric categories (diagnoses), but also the referents of diagnoses (what they are meant to refer to), which is to say mental disorders as such, from a cultural psychological perspective. First, I provide an outline of definitions of mental disorder from leading scholars (neuroscientists, Boorse, Wakefield and phenomenological perspectives), and I argue that the concept of mental disorder is not held together by necessary and sufficient conditions, but by what Wittgenstein called family resemblance. This leads to the subsequent development of a cultural psychological account of mental disorder on a non-essentialist background, which is meant to articulate a third perspective on diagnoses between essentialism and social constructionism. What is Mental Disorder? Those who develop new diagnostic categories and new treatments rarely discuss the difficult question: what is a mental disorder? That we are in fact shockingly far from being able to give a clear answer to this question is reflected in a thorough book by a leading authority on psychopathology, Derek Bolton. Bolton concludes the following: There is, as far as I can see, no stable reality or concept of mental disorder; it breaks up into many, quite different kinds, some reminiscent of an old idea of madness or mental illness, others nothing like this at all. (Bolton, 2008, p. viii) Bolton thus emphasises the heterogeneity of what is conventionally called mental disorder, and, in the present context, this may serve as an indication that although some diagnostic categories may refer to genuine illnesses that are best understood as brain disorders for example (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder come to mind), others may be very different. Perhaps we should not expect that one approach to mental disorder can capture all of them...
