NURS1007 Dimensions Of Physical And Mental Health

Introduction:

Mental health can be considered as one of the most neglected aspect of health in the society and there are a variety of issues that the patients with various mental illnesses have to go through in the society (Psych, Remington & Lee, 2017). Especially for the behavioural disorders such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders, the lack of awareness regarding the need for a recovery oriented care planning and implementation affects the social experience of the patients. Recovery oriented model of care provides the care professionals with the opportunity to implement care practices that align with the holistic care needs facilitating the overall recovery. This essay focuses on the case study of Georgia who had been suffering from anxiety disorder explore the multifactorial issues associated with planning recovery oriented care for her.

Georgia, the patient in the case study, is a 22 year old and had been suffering from anxiety disorders and had extreme difficulties in coping with the stress of her university life. The case study states that she had been in the third year of her university and she had to change from doing a full time course to a part time course due to the inability to cope with the stress that she had been suffering from. Moreover, her anxiety is worsened wherever she has to submit an urgent assignment or has to complete any task within a set deadline. Her panic and anxiety symptoms leads to fear of failure, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, and sense of impending doom. With her deteriorating symptoms, Georgia had also been experiencing insomnia, often lying awake for hours after going to bed and waking up feeling exhausted. Hence, undoubtedly the patients is suffering from extreme anxiety and requires immediate medical attention.

Mental health and mental illness:

Mental illnesses or disorders are one of the most common reasons leading to disability, and the disease burden of mental illness is also highest among all diseases. Mental health can be defined as the state of positive performance of mental functionality that facilitates productive activities and functional relationship with the other people along with facilitating the capacity to adapt to change and cope with the challenging situations. As discussed by Giusti et al. (2018), optimal mental health is essential for personal wellbeing of an individual and continue being a successful and active contributor to the community or society. On the other hand, mental illnesses are characterized to be the health conditions that are associated with alterations in the thought process, mood, and behaviour. Mental disorders facilitate distress and impaired mental functionality of the individual, and they accompany a host of problems such as disability, pain, or death. In this case, the patient Georgia had an anxiety disorder and as she had not been getting any clinical treatment and therapies for her concern, the condition had been worsening and she suffered a range of loss of mental functionality. However, in most cases, the patients cannot even recognize the difference between mental health and mental illness, and for the behavioural disorders such as anxiety disorders, the clinical manifestations are overlapping and not easy to recognize as substantial health issues. As discussed by Helbig?Lang, Rusch and Lincoln (2015), the lack of awareness and literacy among the youth regarding the onset of different mental illnesses are the main contributing factor leading to late diagnosis and associated complications and reduced quality of life. For Georgia as well, her inability to recognize the early onset symptoms of the anxiety disorders had propelled her condition to worsen and affect her social and personal life.

Relationship between mental health and physical health:

The relationship of physical health with mental health is crucial, the distress is any one of the aspects will lead to distress in the corresponding other aspect. As discussed by Shepherd et al. (2016), there are multiple links between mental and physical health, whereas, impact of impaired mental health has been reported to lead to different chronic physical health adversities, simultaneously, the impact of  chronic physical illness has the potential to cause deleterious impact on the mental sanity and functionality of the patient. Elaborating further, the definition of health by the World health organization states that “health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Furthermore the world health organization also states that “there is no health without mental health”. Hence, the lack of optimal physical health facilitates a sense of impending doom, lack of control, fear and uncertainty in the patient which in turn leads to mental health disorders. Similarly, lack of optimal mental health leads to self-care deficit and disrupts self-perception capability and judgment skills regarding physical health and how to maintain it, eventually paving way for physical health adversities. In this case, the patient had been suffering from anxiety disorders which she possibly inherited from her mother, and this mental illness also affected her physical health (Moran et al., 2017). Her vital signs include HR 86; RR 22; B/P 110/75; T 36.7C, and it can be deduced that her anxiety and associated insomnia was leading to shortness of breath and low blood pressure. On a more elaborative note, persistent anxiety can lead to respiratory disorders, cardiovascular disorders, and gastrointestinal problems. Considering her presenting complaints, she had already been suffering from feeling short of breath and heart pounding, hence, lack of medical attention to her anxiety disorder can lead her to developing above mentioned physical disorders (Du et al., 2015).

Understanding of personal recovery:

Personal recovery is a novel and innovative concept in mental health recovery which helps in incorporating personalized input in the recovery planning and implementation. With respect to personal recovery, mental health community support services and clinical services now see supporting personal recovery of people as an important part of their overall work. On a more elaborative note, the primary aim of the personal recovery approach is to implement the urge in the individuals to have a meaning to their life even with a severe mental health problems. Personal recovery encourages the health and wellbeing of the mental patients by the means of facilitating personal recovery goals, self-confidence, developing self-esteem, resilience, maintaining relationships, and sense of purpose. Hence, in this case, it is crucial for Georgia to understand and recognize the aspects of personal recovery, so that she can easily attain clinical recovery (Waller et al., 2014).

Mental health needs and treatment options:

Mental health needs of anxiety disorders differs distinctly from any other mental illnesses. It has to be mentioned in this context that the signs and symptoms of the each mentally ill patient is unique and hence, the treatment modalities opted for the different patient profiles is also fundamentally different. In this case, panic attacks had been the most notable mental health need identified for Georgia. Another very important mental health need for Georgia would be her insomnia. It has to be highlighted that insomnia has been reported to be a health condition which is reported to escalate mental health issues and aggravate the conditions as well. Hence the patent would require treatment for her insomnia as well. The lack of attention and difficulty experienced in concentration is also a notable mental health need which is not just affecting her mental health, but is also disrupting the physical health and social or personal life of the patient affecting her familial relations, university and career. Lastly, lack of social or familial support can also be considered a notable and crucial mental health need for the patient (Baldwin et al., 2014). As expressed by the case study, the patient had not been getting enough support from her parents, family or friends which has the potential to aggravate the anxiety disorder and exacerbate the sense of doom and uncertainty.

The treatment for anxiety disorders involve both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment modalities. For instance, the anxiety or panic attacks would require the aid of antidepressants such as SSRIs, SNRIs, Tricyclic Antidepressants, MAOIs. These medications will potentially curb the anxiety attacks and paranoia that Georgia often encounters. The aid of tranquilizers such as benzodiazepines will help to address the issue of insomnia and disrupted sleep cycle issue that Georgia had been suffering from. Lastly, for the behavioural symptoms, the aid of cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness based exercises will be of extreme help. For instance, authors have mentioned mindfulness based exercises like yoga and meditation has been reported to be of extreme help to patients suffering from anxiety or panic disorders. Similarly, aromatherapy, relaxing music therapy and talk therapies have also been found to be extremely successful in such cases. Lastly, group counselling and one to one counselling will also help her overcome her fear that she will develop chronic anxiety disorder alike her mother and help her recover faster (Boettcher et al., 2014).

Implications for the practice of health professionals:

Mental health staff has to deal with a variety of different mental health illnesses and whereas, compassion and empathy is linked to care approach for each and every mental illness, different types of patients have unique mind-frame and corresponding differences in the behaviour. Hence, as a result the mental health staff also needs to modify patient care approach to a certain extent. In this case, Georgia had been suffering from anxiety disorders, she had been panicky, fearful and aggravated at all circumstances in such cases, the mental health professions have to be very careful to approach the patient in a calm, composed and patient manner. The care professionals must also implement extreme care and resilience while communicating or approaching a patient with anxiety disorders so as to not startle or shock them into panic attacks. The care professionals must also use soft and subtle communication approach and tone of voice to help the patients feel safe and secure. Georgia has also been fearful of failing her university and become a chronic anxiety patient like her mother, hence the care professionals while dealing with such patents will need to be empathetic and practice active listening to reassure her of recovery prospective and keep her hopeful (Gutiérrez & Camarena, 2015).

Conclusion:

On a concluding note, mental illness is a crucial health priority, especially for the youth. The rising stress of modern day, education and career is facilitating more distress to the already deteriorating mental health of the youth. The lack of awareness and recognition of early onset of mental health issues in young adults is deteriorating the condition more. The essay discovered the impact of mental illness such as an anxiety disorder on the physical health of the patients, the importance of personalized recovery and treatment approaches applicable3 to Georgia successfully.  Although, the need for more awareness and enhanced screening for mental illnesses in the young adults is a very important intervention to be incorporated to ensure a mentally healthy young generation.

References:

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Du, M. Y., Liao, W., Lui, S., Huang, X. Q., Li, F., Kuang, W. H., … & Gong, Q. Y. (2015). Altered functional connectivity in the brain default-mode network of earthquake survivors persists after 2 years despite recovery from anxiety symptoms. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 10(11), 1497-1505.

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