Archive for the ‘Mental Health’ Category
Focus on the Individual
The focus of recovery should be on the person or the individual and not the process of treatment. There is a constant shift in the manners by which people suffering from psychological disorders are being treated. During the past centuries, due partly to the drive to establish more reliable and effective treatment methods, most mental health professionals fail to focus on the process occurring in a patient, the changes he is undergoing throughout the treatment and the improvements that are associated with the treatment. Instead, the common point for most practitioners is the process of treatment itself- whether or not one treatment is more effective than the other or whether or not a specific therapy could actually work for all patients.
It is a good thing that mental illnesses are viewed now from the sufferer’s perspectives rather than the technicalities of the treatment or therapy. Individuals have various presentations of a mental disorder. Thus needing individualized forms of recovery treatments that are curtailed to the person’s preferences, unique characteristics such as resiliency, strengths and weaknesses, cultural background and experiences.
Focus on the Community
It should be grounded on peer support ? External support is invaluable in the process of recovery. Knowing that there are other people who, like the patient, also struggle to achieve the state of well being they want to achieve. It helps for them to know that there are people who cares for them, who wants to see them gain back their life and who shares the same sufferings as they do.
Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there’s more to Mental Health than you may have first thought.
There should exist a mental health support group that would guide and enlighten the patients with the reality of the psychological disorder. This also provides the mutual support that is needed in gaining skills and knowledge on the disorder which is a contributory factor towards improvement.
Focus on Issues Surrounding Mental Wellness
It should be well-directed ? A direction set by both the mental health providers and the patient should be prepared during the initial stage of recovery. The patient determines the pace of healing while the mental health professional facilitate the direction.
It should be non-linear – This perspective adheres to the belief that a recovery process is both an end and a process. It is not the usual step-by-step process that has varying levels. In mental health recovery, it is possible that a person who has already overcome the symptoms of a mental disorder could still be troubled by the relapse of the same symptoms. It is, in fact, a trial-and-error process with the promise of development and usual setbacks.
It should be holistic ? The concept of holism should be fully integrated into the process of recovery. Recovery from a mental disorder does not only cover specific and separate issues like biological or psychosocial aspects of the disorder. Instead, it affects a person in an extensive manner. Thus recovery should also focus on the micro as well as macro issues surrounding the disorder.
Lastly, the process of recovery should be empowered by hope matched by the motivation and willingness to break free from the mental illness. This could only be achieved when all individual factors ? the perspective of the individual and the direction he is taking, the support of external groups such as the family and peers and the right frame of mind.
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By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit his new site for adsense publishers: Free Adsense Websites
The following paragraphs summarize the work of Mental Health experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of Mental Health. Heed their advice to avoid any Mental Health surprises.
If we speak of a primary center for treatment of mental illness in Wisconsin, Winnebago Mental Health Institute or WMHI is the first facility that comes to mind. Located at Lake Winnebago’s west shore, this state facility has about 1300 admissions every year and an average of 250 patients.
The facility was constructed in 1871. Originally named Northern Asylum for the Insane, its name was later changed to Winnebago State Hospital before the name was again changed to Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
Basically, WMHI’s services can be grouped into three areas. The first one is called Adult Service 1, consisting of forensic units. The second area is called Adult Service 2, for adults that are multiply impaired, and those requiring treatment for behavior modification, substance abuse and mental illnesses. The third unit, Youth Services, is for children and adolescents that are multiply impaired and those who are mentally ill and have substance abuse disorder.
The Therapeutic Services Department is responsible in evaluating and assessing the patients. There are 4 divisions of service: occupational therapy, recreational therapy, speech therapy and physical therapy. These divisions are responsible in the holistic approach to treatment.
There are various treatment activities in WMHI. One of them is individual psychotherapy. A treatment plan is outlined for each patient to determine the frequency of sessions that he must undergo. A clinical staff writes notes for each visit. The attending psychiatrist meets the treatment team on a regular basis to review the treatment plan.
Another treatment activity is through psychopharmacology. The attending psychiatrist determines and orders the medication according to the individual patient’s treatment plan. Psychotropic medication is used in order to achieve treatment goals and reduce risk of injury and violence.
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Group therapy is another kind of treatment, where problems of each patient are shared and solutions are discussed. Other treatment activities include self-help groups, family therapy and community groups.
However, the facility is faced with controversy lately. City inspectors found violations of the hospital. Infractions include failure to protect patient’s rights such as the right to be protected from violent and sexual behaviors of other patients, to have privacy and to be in a safe environment. Other violations include medication errors and failure to correct environmental hazards and infection control in the facility.
Within a period of two years, three deaths and one rape case were reported. These, among other problems, have caused authorities to cite the facility for neglect and lack of attention. Reports indicate that poor supervision and staffing as well as bad judgment in medication caused these problems. Because of this, the government ordered the facility to correct the problems by 2008. Otherwise, it shall lose its federal funding for both Medicaid and Medicare.
With this development, lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill requiring all patient deaths in the facility be investigated. This is to create more transparency and accountability to the taxpayers.
More problems are at hand for WMHI. Hospital officials cite financial loss as the reason why there is not enough staff in the facility. Because of such financial losses, there are not enough employees to maintain hospital safety and provide better service to patients.
Despite these problems that the Winnebago Mental Health Institute has, hospital officials continue to work hard to give quality treatment to their patients.
Don’t limit yourself by refusing to learn the details about Mental Health. The more you know, the easier it will be to focus on what’s important.
About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit this new site for my swedish customers: Billigt Webbhotell – from SEK 10:- per month!
It is amazing how a lump of gray matter could manipulate all the systems in our body in the most systematic way possible with all the intricacies and complex functioning. But what’s queer about this stuff (the organ we call brain) is that it could malfunction in a way that it could result to single or multiple representations of mental health problems all in an individual.
Clinical research and laboratory observations consistently arrive at a conclusion that mental health disorders are products of the accumulation and interaction of several contributing factors. It would have been easier to identify each disorder if there is only one cause to all meal health disorders but that simply isn’t the truth. In reality, all mental disorders could root from several causes such as an environment that is conducive to the development of a mental disorder or individual genetic make-up that programs the brain (or the faulty components of the brain) to develop into something non-normal.
Saying that it’s all about the pathological make-up of the brain that causes the mental health disorders is simplistic, to say the least. Looking at the strange development of these disorders would reveal that there are actually at least 3 contributing factors that may be seen as potential causes, all of which have varying degrees. This means that a particular culprit could be more dominant than the other.
First with the physical causes. This bracket of causes is biological in nature. Each individual has a distinct and unique biological make-up that dictates the direction of his health, may it be physical or mental. Some people are born with inherent tendency to develop a specific mental disorder in comparison with other people while others are less prone to risks. This cause also covers the genetic make-up of an individual, the biological make-up and the events in life that affects the physical body (such as a trauma on the head or substance abuse).
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Second are the environmental or social causes. Nature VS Nurture has been a great debate in the scientific community but research confirms that a person experience a spilt-half of both. Nature of course are the physical attributes of an individual while Nurture reflects more on the social structures and physical, emotional and mental environments to which an individual was exposed to. This factor tells us more on how an individual grew up, the interaction of influences that affected all facets of his growth and the mechanisms he used to cope with a specific environment.
It is observable that some mental disorders are caused primarily by the consequences of experience brought about by the environment. For example, people (especially children) living in a stressful, chaotic and unstable environment are more likely to develop mental illnesses than those individuals living in peaceful environment. This consequence is due to the fact that there are certain social and environmental components that may become risk factors to the development of mental health problems.
Third is the psychological factor. This particular factor tells us more on the psychological state of a person, his coping mechanisms to certain life events that could otherwise end up with psychological disorders, his perception on his own self and his environment and thought patterns that affect his mental health. For example, someone who has gone beyond the limit of his stress coping capacity is likely to break down mentally as a result of the psyche’s automatic “lock down” to protect itself.
For the majority of people lacking mental health, it is often the case of triggering the mental health to break down through series factors that have eventually contributed to the cause of mental health disorder.
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By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit this new site for my swedish customers: Billigt Webbhotell – from SEK 10:- per month!
Unlike physical disorders, mental illnesses are often not recognizable and difficult to identify. This makes these disorders a lot harder to understand leading the sufferers to believe that they are alone in their suffering and that help is unavailable. Top these with their own conviction that there is no way to heal them and that the disorder is too embarrassing.
These beliefs are true to most mental health patients making it hard for them to seek treatment or comfort, to say the least.
In response to changing these views, mental health support groups were created to help patients know that there other people experiencing the same disorders that they experience which lead them to seek treatment. These also make them feel that there is hope to their suffering and could motivate them to stick to their treatment. For some, its their groups that provide the support system they lack.
What is a Mental Health Support Group?
A support group is a gathering of people with a common goal or interest. Translated into mental health, it is a group of people who have similar sufferings and provide moral and emotional support to people like them. Usually, these support groups focus and specialize on a specific condition. For example, it is rare to find a depression support group that also covers schizophrenia. This need to specialize is driven by the fact that a psychiatric or mental disorder is a very complicated issue thus requiring a specific direction.
If you find yourself confused by what you’ve read to this point, don’t despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.
Support groups could be used in conjunction with formal and professional treatment and are often confused with group psychotherapy sessions. Group therapy is different in support group in such a way that the former requires a formal and pedagogical setting. This forms a group of people with similar disorders and subjected under the guidance of qualified mental health professional.
A support group could be formed by anyone who has a need to establish this type of group or who have a particular interest on the services that could be gathered from this group. It could be a patient of a specific mental disorder, a family member of someone who has a mental illness- virtually anybody. More organized support groups, however, are formed by mental health providers, non-profit organizations or mental clinics. Oftentimes, this type is controlled by a facilitator or a moderator who is knowledgeable enough in the field as to qualify him to manage the group.
Members of a support group are usually patients of mental illnesses. Someone suffering from unipolar or bipolar disorder is normally found on support groups focusing on these specific disorders or on a broader disorder like that of depression.
The most popular format of support groups is through internet which is broader in scope both in audience and varieties of topics. However, a customized but very limited type of support group is the person-to-person format or through telephone. Lack of more personalized support is the common disadvantage of joining online support groups.
A mental health support group could augment the professional treatment you receive but the services you get from this group should never be treated as substitute to your medical and psychological treatments. This group could open you up to reality and may even give you new hope, but remember that treatment for a mental illness is not all about will power.
Now might be a good time to write down the main points covered above. The act of putting it down on paper will help you remember what’s important about Mental Health.
About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit this new site for my swedish customers: Billigt Webbhotell – from SEK 10:- per month!
This article explains a few things about Mental Health, and if you’re interested, then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you don’t know.
Central to mental health assessment is the use of reliable and validated assessment tools. Among them are the mental health tests.
In order to accurately conduct diagnosis, prognosis and assessment of symptoms, mental health professionals have developed various types of tests that are apt to the needs of each mental health issue. Obviously, only the subjects within the concern of a specific issue are covered in the tests. Here are some of the basic categories of mental health tests:
Neuropsychological Tests
If a neuropsychological cause is suspected in an individual, the clinician would use a paper-and-pencil test to determine any deficit in sensorimotor and cognitive capacities. These may include a tendency to disregard one or several items in a visual field or attention problem. Among the most common neuropsychological tests is the Bender-Gestalt Test which aims to asses the person’s sensorimotor skills by making them reproduce nine drawings.
A person who may have a diagnosable mental illness may be able to reproduce different figures, change the positioning of the figures drawn or change the parts of some of the figures copied. After this activity, they would be asked to remember the image. Most people with mental disorders usually have memory deficits. While this test may not sufficiently identify the specific type of brain damage among people assessed, it is a reliable tool to conclude that a person may or may not have brain damage.
Intelligence Tests
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While the use of intelligence tests is usually more productive in educational and industrial settings, it is however useful in determining whether a person is mentally healthy or not. In the clinical setting, these tests are used to have an insight on the person’s intellectual capacities, strengths and weaknesses especially when mental damages are suspected. These tests normally were designed to measure basic intelligence, abstract reasoning, verbal fluency and spatial memory. Results from intelligence tests are used in identifying to which bracket of intelligence a person belongs. People with relatively low scores on IQ tests have some forms of mental disability while those scoring way beyond the average individual may have lower susceptibility to the development of mental disorders. However, this should not be taken as a generalization.
Symptom Questionnaires
The most prevalent type of test these days, symptom questionnaires is used by clinicians and laymen alike. In their original forms, symptom questionnaires are used to directly asses whether a person manifests or feels symptoms of a specific disorder. However, such questionnaires could also cover a wide variety of symptoms from different mental disorders.
Personality Inventories
These are questionnaires that are helpful in assessing people’s typical manner of behavior, thinking and feeling. These provide the fundamental information on assessing a person’s well-being (a very important aspect in mental health), ways of coping, self concept, perception, attitudes, beliefs and vulnerabilities.
Versions of these personality tests are normally seen on online resources. In fact, many people get their mental health assessments from these resources. While these may be helpful as self-help tests, many of the mental health tests on websites are not validated and may have low reliability. These are powerful tools however many are not tested for their validity and reliability. If these two important concepts of psychological testing are not met, the purpose of the test may be defeated.
In case you are using online tests, please be aware that it should be PhD-certified or PhD-approved. Any other types of certifications confirming that someone expert in the field of psychological testing has given his approval of the tests are helpful.
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By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest acquisition: Adsense Sites and make sure to download the free adsense sites package!
If a friend or someone in the family is to be treated in a mental facility, we try to find the best facility for them. After all, the goal is for them to get well, and we believe that our choice of hospital is vital for the person’s recovery. In Illinois, when we speak of psychiatric facilities, one hospital easily comes to mind. That is Elgin Mental Health Center or EMHC.
As the second oldest state hospital in Illinois, this facility opened in 1872 under its former name, Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane. The first-ever physiological measurements of mental patients were recorded by the Elgin Papers back in the 1890s. By 1997, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations gave EMHC its commendation for two years in a row.
How the hospital was developed can be broken down into five phases. The first phase ended in 1893. A stable leadership was responsible for the gradual growth during this period.
After this phase, the hospital immensely grew to more than twice its size. This second phase, which ended by 1920, was characterized by a lot of politicking, leadership changes and power struggles in the system.
For the third period, growth was more rapid. Hospital population, which reached its peak by the 1950s, increased for both geriatric and veterans. This is because the period was post World War I and World War II.
By the time the third phase ended, hospital population declined. During this phase, psychotropic medications were introduced. Other milestones for this period include the development of community health facilities, deinstitutionalization, until the decentralization of decision-making and authority. This fourth phase ended until the 1980s.
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The last phase is what some call the ?rebirth.? It began in 1983, when hospital census was at its lowest. Because of this, the hospital was on the verge of closure. However, the state decided to close Manteno Mental Health Center instead.
During this time, the hospital was practically rebuilt. While the old buildings used a congregate model called the Kirkbride plan, new physical facilities were added such as cottages in order to adhere to a segregate plan. There are two divisions, civil and forensic. Each division has an acute treatment center, office and conference rooms which faculty and trainees can use.
Forensic programs were further developed, and new affiliations with medical schools were also made. Affiliations include that with The Chicago Medical School, among others. An increase in educational activities showed that EMHC is also concerned with the education of future doctors and medical graduates.
Hospital system operations were also modified. Activities of community mental health centers are integrated in the system operations. Community mental health centers refer their patients to EMHC. These community mental facilities include DuPage County Health Department, Lake County Mental Health Center, Ecker Center for Mental Health, and Kenneth Young Center.
At present, admissions are close to 1300 annually. Patients are usually African-American, Euro-American and Hispanic. The hospital holds 582 to 600 beds and about 40 full-time physicians.
Just like any health facility, EMHC is harassed with problems and controversies with respect to their policies and programs. Nevertheless, Elgin Mental Health Center continues to do what it is supposed to do, and that is to provide the best treatment for their patients.
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When most people think of Mental Health, what comes to mind is usually basic information that’s not particularly interesting or beneficial. But there’s a lot more to Mental Health than just the basics.
Patients of mental health require special attention and treatments and on normal circumstances, the prison cell will not give the proper, not even the sufficient treatment. It has been observed that those people who are suffering from certain mental disorders become worse while they are in correctional facilities. They get intimidated by the other inmates, they get abused even and the worst part is, they do not get the right treatment for their disorders. There is simply no possible way for them to get treated inside such facilities. Therefore, their psychological disorders become aggravated.
In the past recent years, it has been observed that offenders with mental illnesses are fastly falling into the jurisdiction of criminal justice system. Added to this are the shocking percentages of people with mental illnesses that are mixed into normal groups of people in correctional facilities. This is due to the lack of mental health facilities or their feeling of intimidation and reluctance to avail the services of such facilities which make them unable to connect to the community support systems that they are entitled to. In the end, people with mental disorders find themselves committing both minor and severe crimes, thus incarceration without receiving the services they require. This brought on the need for a judicial system that would specifically advance the services needed by criminal offenders with mental disorders.
Because of the need to improve the criminal justice system in the country, government officials, policy makers, the Council of State Governments and mental health professionals convened to come up with a solution that will answer the specific needs of criminal offenders with psychological disorders.
Mental health courts are the links between mental health and criminal law. This body combined the specialties of almost all types of people working in both fields to come up with favorable programs that work for the advantage mentally ill offenders. These courts commission court personnel such as judges, prosecutors and attorneys who have expertise and sufficient knowledge on mental health. Up to date, there are about 27 courts around the United States that are promoting treatment methods that are supported by the courts in exchange for incarceration.
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These courts are adhering to therapeutic methods for people with mental health needs and they work on two approaches. One is to help prevent the rate of mental illnesses from rising to lessen the frequency of criminal offenses in support of public protection and two, distinguish that the need for criminal sanctions is highly unnecessary when it is proven that the cause of the criminal act is a psychological disorder. With these approaches in mind, there are two goals enveloping this type of courts, namely: a) to lessen the exacerbation of criminal behaviors due to mental health illnesses magnified by insufficient number of services extended to people who need them and b) to find the alternative solution to imprisonment that would restrain the recurrence of the criminal act while providing treatment options for the offenders.
These courts believe that their services could augment the provisions of mental health facilities and may also extend the services of the criminal justice system. This way, such courts are able to give the alternative solutions that help lessen the number of offenses of individuals who are not mentally well.
It cannot be denied though that this program is still at its infancy period- having too little resource and having systems that are still developing. In fact, it was noted on the research conducted by the Bazelon Center Review that each court system has no specific model to which these courts could follow their structures. Also, they are allowed to create their own systems, rules and procedures that will work for the best interests of the facilities.
However, it cannot be discounted that mental health courts are playing the crucial role of separating offenders with mental health needs from normal people to whom criminal justice system applies well.
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At any time of the year, there is one person in every group of five people who has a diagnosable mental disorder. This means that 1/5 of all families in the United States have family members who are experiencing developing or aggravated symptoms of mental impairment. This translates to approximately 20% of the American society.
Mental health or the lack of it is experienced by all types of people in America- from children to elderly, from Native Americans to Hispanics, from physically healthy individuals to those who have chronic diseases.
General statistics
a. Nearly 9% of the American general population suffers from all forms of phobias.
b. 5% have major depression
c. Nearly 4 million individuals suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
d. 2 million Americans have Schizophrenia
e. MAnother 2 million have Bipolar Disorders
f. MNearly 2.5 million have Panic Disorders
Statistics on the Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Children
? It is estimated that around 7 to 12 million children have symptoms of psychological disorders.
a. ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ? 5% to 10% of the children population is diagnosable with ADHD. It is the most prevalent clinical disorder among children. Half of all children with this psychiatric disorder do not receive diagnosis.
b. Manic Depression ? 30% of all children aged 6 to 12 ld who have manic depression are likely to develop Bipolar Disorder, a type of disorder that has symptoms of mania or a sense of “high” on activity plus periods of depression.
c. Conduct Disorder ? 10% of all American children have conduct disorder.
d. Depression ? In every group of 33 children there is one who has symptoms of clinical depression
e. Learning Disorders ? Almost 20% of all American children have learning disability. Half of them have diagnosable ADHD.
f. Suicide ? Suicide is the fifth leading cause of death among children.
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Statistics on the Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Young People
a. General Data – Nearly 75% of all young people who suffer from mental disorders do not get the help they need. Like in the general population, 1 in every 5 adolescent have a diagnosable psychological disorder which include minor depression, drug-dependence, Attention Deficit Disorder, Anorexia Bulimia, Hypochondriasis, Gender Identity Disorders and Eating Disorders, and more aggravated disorders.
b. Anorexia Nervosa ? This disorder is more common among females than males affecting an average of 150 individuals in any given time. Thus, 1% of all female young people population is affected by anorexia nervosa and 10% of all affected individuals die due to suicide, cardiac arrest and starvation.
c. Bulimia Nervosa ? One to three out of 100 people show signs and symptoms of bulimia nervosa.
d. Anxiety Disorder ? 10% of the young adult population have anxiety disorders.
e. Depression ? One in every eighth individuals have clinical depression. One in every five young people have emotional problems and 30% of all adolescents who were diagnosed for emotional problems are depressed.
f. Juvenile Delinquency ? More than 150, 000 American teenagers are under the criminal justice system. The majority of them have more than two mental disorders. 57% of all juvenile delinquents have reported of prior hospitalization associated with their mental problems.
g. Schizophrenia – In every 1000 adolescents, there are three people who are suffering from Schizophrenia.
h. Serious Emotional Disturbances ? 10% of all young adults have severe disturbances in their emotional states.
i. Suicide ? For ages 15 to 24, this is the leading cause of death. There are at least 500, 000 individuals who take their own lives yearly.
Statistics on the Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Adults
a. Depression ? Depression is the leading psychiatric disorder among elderly affecting 5% of the entire elderly population.
b. 6.5 million Adult people have severe mental disorders.
c. In every group of 100,000 people, there are at least 240 of them suffering from a type of mental illness
d. 6000 adult Americans commit suicide each year
e. Approximately 1 million old Americans suffer from organic mental disorders
f. An estimated 15% of the adult population experience dementia
g. 1 million adult Americans have severe Alzheimer’s disease
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If you have a chronic disease like heart attack or diabetes, you will have to live life with it. You will learn to adjust after each attack and would know the signs that there is an acute attack budding. The same is true with recovery from a mental illness. You cannot expect that during treatment, you will be a renewed man. Symptoms would still be apparent and you would experience things that are sometimes hopeless and debilitating but still you have to adjust through them. And with each adjustment, you would feel that you are starting to move forward, leaving your mental illness behind.
Mental health recovery is all about improvement from a bad case to something better. It is a continuous process and definitely not a linear one. You would move from square one to square two but you should always be ready to move one step back. You would learn newer ways to control the symptoms of your mental illness and would have insights on how to cope with them. There would be a lot of disappointments and errors the results from these errors are oftentimes rewarding.
Mental health recovery is a lifelong process as much as mental illness took years to develop sometimes even decades. A person could struggle through years of being controlled solely by a mental disorder and will have to face a lifelong effort to get out of it. You may achieve a life beyond the chains of your previous mental illness symptoms but you would still have to bout with intermittent attacks of symptoms.
One crucial factor to all kinds of illnesses is early intervention. Someone who presents symptoms of schizophrenia during earlier stages have a better chance of easier recovery with early intervention than someone who has aggravated case. Likewise, any signs of relapse that are recognized and treated early could define the barrier between going through the same disorder again or completely shutting all doors towards total recovery.
However, recovery from a mental disorder is just one of the many parts of the process. A person suffering from mental illness should also work to restore his mental health or sense of well-being.
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Many individuals who have histories of mental illness often resort to a life that is withdrawn from the public due to social stigma and discrimination associated with the mental disorder. This leads to impaired sense of self-worth thus invaliding the whole idea of recovery.
For most people, the hardest stage of the recovery process is not the beginning but the end. In this stage, a person has to reclaim everything that he has lost during the entire period he had the mental illness plus every lost opportunity that he would have taken prior to the onset of symptoms.
Sadly, reclaiming these bits of life is far harder than all the aspects of recovery combined. Going back to “what could have been” takes a very long time as well as mending the damages caused by the mental illness due to very limited opportunities opened to people who have suffered a mental disorder.
But this shouldn’t be. You may not be able to go back to your previous job or do the things that you used to do but you could redirect your life to something different but equally rewarding. This has happened before to other people, it will happen to you.
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Mental health assessment is conceived only through a series of tedious processes that will help identify all necessary details of the mental wellness of the person leading to a conclusive judgment. It is a common knowledge among practitioners of mental health care providers that a mental health assessment could only be conceived if all information relating to the disorder could be gathered. Diagnosis may take a few minutes but arriving at a conclusion is possible only after a certain period of case study.
Fleshing out the details is necessary to arrive at an accurate result- may it be diagnosis or prognosis. But this could only be achieved by paying attention to small details that could uncover underlying symptoms, when developments of symptoms are well-recorded and when the mental state of the patient is strictly monitored. A psychiatric assessment is built on careful attention to details associated with the person including medical history, upbringing and environment, experiences such as childhood traumas along with others. If not done properly, the doctor may fail to see crucial details that could affect the result of the evaluation.
Apart from what has been listed above, a psychiatric assessment could also include evaluation on presented behavior, manner of thinking, mood, capacity to reason out and to express oneself and memory. Routine medical assessment such as blood test, urine test, and other laboratory tests are also included.
Preparation
Health assessment such as this requires prior groundwork. Symptoms of a disorder must be clearly recorded in a diary or journal. This helps keep track of the symptoms that may be a sign of improvement or of worsening the case. This would give the psychiatrist or the doctor a clearer picture of the mental health illness. If the patient is a child, the parent should see to it that the preparation of the journal is carefully supervised or that the parent should also make a separate journal to keep a detailed history of observations.
If already diagnosed and given medications for the control of symptoms, alterations of behavior or symptoms should also be recorded.
Interview
Nearly all psychiatric assessment require interview. Mental health illnesses normally lack in the presentation of observable symptoms. This is why talk is highly valuable in psychoanalytical and behavioral assessment of a patient.
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A series of interviews gives the doctor a better look at the information that a patient could present. This offers the chance to gather information, clarify ambiguous details and to refute any established impressions.
There are three types of questions used during a psychiatric interview-
a) close questions
b) open questions
c) choice questions
Interviews are not only valuable because they clearly open opportunities for gathering information; it is also the opportunity for the patient to tell his or her story. Talk is beneficial as it allows usually terrifying thoughts to be voiced out.
Physical Examination
Neurological and cardiovascular examinations are the most commonly used physical examination for the assessment of mental health. The choice of examination is influenced mainly by factors such as the age of the person, concurrent disorders, planned medical treatment, concurrent medications and substance use or dependency.
Summary of the Findings
Plain examination and evaluation of a patient would not give reliable information for managing his or her mental health. A conclusive summary of all findings and accompanying recommendations for treatments and therapies would help prepare the person for recovery.
This article’s coverage of the information is as complete as it can be today. But you should always leave open the possibility that future research could uncover new facts.
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