NURSING 3004 Mental Health Nursing
Question
Please read the following:
- Victorian Public Health & Wellbeing Plan 2015-2019 https://www2.health.vic_gov.au/about/health-stratergies-health-wellbeing-plan
- Victorian Department of Health, Mental Health Promotion Publications (http://www.health.vic.gov.au/mentalhealthpromotion/ )
- Objective 3 ‘implement strategies for promotion and prevention in mental health’ of the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013 — 2020 (http://www.who.int/mental health/action plan 2013/bw version.pdf?ua=1 )
- Influencing the social and economic factors that determine mental health, such as income, social status, education, employment, working conditions, access to appropriate health services and the physical environment.
- Strengthening the understanding and the skills of individuals in ways that support their efforts to achieve and maintain mental health – building resilience and recovery orientation.
Answer
Discussion and analysis of mental health promotion
Introduction
Well-being of an individual does not only concern the physical health but mental health is also an integral part of it. Mental health of an individual concerns the well-being of psychological, social and emotional aspects. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), mental health can be defined as a mental state of welfare in which an individual can handle the stresses of daily life, understands and realises her/ his own capabilities, able to contribute to his/ her community and also capable of working fruitfully and effectively (Aneshensel, Phelan & Bierman, 2013). Along with this, WHO also emphasises on fact the mental health is not just the lack of mental illness. Mental is very vital for every individual in every part of their. Sadly, due to ignorance and social stigma, mental health is still a neglected matter. According to the, Australian Bureau of Statistics almost 17.5 per cent of total Australian population were reported to mental disorder in 2015-15 (“National Health Survey: Mental Health and co-existing physical health conditions, Australia, 2014 – 15”, 2018). Additionally, 13.3 % of total population reported that they have at least one mental health condition along with two or more physical illness (“National Health Survey: Mental Health and co-existing physical health conditions, Australia, 2014 – 15”, 2018). Some of the frequent and commonly reported mental disorders are anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and dementia. Warning signs of these mental illness includes eating or sleeping too little or too much, indifferent behaviour, delusions, lack of energy, substance abuse (drug, nicotine and alcohol), and confusions. Currently, mental health disorder is very predominant in Australia along with other countries globally. According to WHO, almost 25 per cent people globally suffer mental or neurological illness at some point of their life (“WHO | Mental disorders affect one in four people”, 2018). In addition, approximately four hundred and fifty million people gets affected by mental disorder globally which makes mental health disorders foremost cause of ill health globally (“WHO | Mental disorders affect one in four people”, 2018). Owing to this reason, Australian government and international organisation like WHO have taken some mental health promotion initiatives to tackle this situation. Therefore, in this article, the mental health promotion initiative taken by Australian government and international organisation like WHO will be discussed and analysed here within.
Mental health promotion programs and initiative
Mental health can affect any individual of any race and gender and at any age and time of their life and it can be intervened accordingly. Consequently, various health promotion initiatives have been taken by government to tackle mental health disorder targets different age group or different socio- economic and political aspect. Therefore, in this section, different mental health promotion initiative will be discussed accordingly.
Mental health promotion programs in schools
Recently, lots of studies have been directing towards the mental health needs of children. Great achievements neuroimaging and neuropsychological research area have been made in recent year on how different incidents affect child’s brain development (Giedd, 2015). It can alter the brain development of a child which in turn hinders their ability to learn and other important social skills. Studies have shown that environmental stressors like violence poverty and family disruption can affect a child’s brain development which in turn leads to mental disorder. Social stigma and lack of awareness prevents people to seek proper help for treatments. This is the reason behind the high suicide rate amongst the Australian youth aged between 15 – 24 years old. Recent research have shown that youth (aged between 15 – 24 years) suicide rate in Australia in one of the highest amongst other countries. The rate is 11.6 death per 100,000 individual (Kinchin & Doran, 2018). To prevent this or to lower the rate, Australian government has taken some mental health promotion initiative for young people and children. The government funded programs are known as KidsMatter Early Childhood, Response Ability, headspace School Support, MindMatters and KidsMatter Early Childhood. All this program’s focus is the mental health in early education program. KidsMatter Early Childhood focusses on the mental health during early childhood learning services and was initiated to respond the issue of high rates of mental health illness amongst school age children. KidsMatter Primary programs goal is the same as above. MindMatters program was developed for the improvement of secondary school student’s mental health and well- being. On the contrary, Response Ability was developed for the educators or teachers to provide support to the young people with mental health whereas headspace School Support program was developed as a postvention program for suicide incidents in Australian communities. However, recently, Australian government have announced that all these existing program will merged into a single one named ‘Be You’ focussing on providing support for mental health challenges in schools (“History – Be You”, 2018).
Mental health promotion for low income families
Mental health is strongly and inseparably linked with economic and social detriments like low income and social status as poor mental health compromises general health, creativity and longevity of a particular individual. Also, poor infrastructure, underdeveloped community is closely related to the financial strength of a family. Thus, there is a need for the promotion of mental health initiatives to underdeveloped community. Three kind of action can be taken on areas for the promotion of such condition which are empowerment, social support and advocacy (Ross, 2017).
Empowerment: Empowerment is the process by which traditionally disadvantaged community can overcome their barrier by help of the government and organisation. One of the example of empowerment is to provide micro credit scheme to alleviate debt for low income families as generally these people are indebted to loan sharks for very large amounts. In Australia, there is a universal strategy promote emotional and social well-being for unprivileged community known as The National Empowerment Program. This program consists of three phases. Phase one includes community consultation and workshop and phase two includes training, support, advocacy and research. Phase three involves the implementation of the twelve month programs for social, emotional and cultural wellbeing program (“About National Empowerment Project”, 2018).
Social support: the aim of the social support is to provide strategies to live healthy lifestyle and promote mental health. Studies have suggested that poor mental health of mother also affect the development of the baby. Thus, one example of social support is to promote and intervene maternal mental health which in turn will also improve the mother-child relationship. Social support also includes teaching of life skills which people generally do not learn growing up. Life skills includes critical and creative thinking, problem solving, decision making, interpersonal skills and effective communication. The Department of Health & Human Services of Victoria State Government, Australia provides Mental Health Community Support Services (MHCSS). This service is provides vital support to the people who are suffering from severe mental health and it is different from clinical mental health service. MHCSS helps psychiatric disable people to manage their self- care, development of relationship and social skill for the purpose of better quality of education, housing and employment for these people (“Mental Health Community Support Services”, 2018).
Advocacy: The goal of advocacy is to increase public demand for mental health and influence potential stakeholders to invest in mental health. Advocacy can be used to raise awareness amongst the people about the harmful effect of the mental health disorder. Mental awareness in particularly common amongst poor families. Advocacy can be used as a tool to raise awareness to these people. For example, in the year 2016, Mind Australia Limited launched an advocacy program which aims to influence the central issues faced by people with mental health. Mind Australia Limited is Australia’s one of the leading mental health service providers which is community managed (“Mind Australia | Community mental health services”, 2018).
Mental health promotion in workplace
Mental health and workplace stress are intricately related and an individual can develop mental illness in workplace due to work or employment stress. There is a high possibility that an individual will develop a mental illness due to the employment stress although most of them managed to keep their illness at bay without implication their work. Recent studies have reported that stress and work related mental issues are emerging as leading contributing factor to the global mental health problem. Statistics suggests that a worker succumbs to the workplace stress in every 3.2 days (“Mental health in the workplace | Australian Human Rights Commission”, 2018). Research also suggests that Australian business lose almost 6.5 billion dollar each year to provide treatments for the workers with mental illness (“Mental health in the workplace | Australian Human Rights Commission”, 2018). Thus, it is in best interest for both the organisation and workers to create a safe work environment to tackle this situation and promotion of mental health in work environment. However, researchers have argued that potential of work environment promotion has yet not been totally fulfilled. By creating a safe work environment, workers will be less like to be succumb to the mental illness which will in turn benefit the organisation as well as the workers. Victoria State Government’s Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic) ensures that all workplace environment has to be safe for work and it is applied to all workplace. According to this law all employer has to provide a work environment which is safe and without any risk to health. This is very much like the Australian government’s model work health and safety (WHS) legislation. Australian government has implemented this law in 2011 which is to be implemented all over Australia. This legislation’s objective is to ensure work environment safety as well as promotion of mental health in workplace environment (“Model WHS Laws”, 2018).
Mental health promotion for the access to health services
Equal access of health services to all Australian (indigenous and non- indigenous) is still not achieved. Many region dominantly residing by aboriginal Australian lack the proper infrastructure for the access of health services. Due to this reason, many people suffer mental illness which are perfectly curable or might be prevented if the person had the access to health services (Parker & Milroy, 2014). For instance, report showed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people access healthcare services at significantly lower level compared to other Australians. Significant reasons for this are lack of affordable healthcare services, shortage of health workers, general practitioners, specialist medical service personnel. Lack of transportation in particularly remote and rural area also plays a vital role in this. Almost 30 per cent aboriginal Australians have reported to have psychological distress which can lead to mental illness. This is almost 3 times higher than the non- indigenous Australians (“Department of Health |Barriers to accessing health care access”, 2018). Suicide rate is also higher for the aboriginal people compared to other Australians. To counter this problem, mental health service promotion dedicated to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is needed. It requires community based empowering solutions which are culturally appropriate to strengthen the infrastructure. Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) should also provide complete mental health care services along with mental health promotion and prevention initiatives focused on indigenous community. Keeping that in mind Australian government has started the initiative National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. The goal of this strategy is suicide prevention, trim down the prevalence, impact and cause of suicide in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. The focus of this initiative is on early intervention and to provide holistic care of physical, mental, spiritual and cultural health of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. This program also encourages the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to involve and develop their own cultural appropriate strategies (“Department of Health | National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy”, 2018).
Achieving mental health through resilience building
Resilience is a psychiatric terminology but the term was taken from theoretical physics which means the characteristics of a material to retain its shape or to resume to its original force after being stretched, compressed or bent. In psychology, resilience means to an individual’s capability to recover from extreme stress and trauma. It signifies that some individual managed recover fully despite suffering significant traumatic conditions such as serious threat, intense deprivation and stress. Resilience considered being one of the major components of mental health to make successful psychological adjustments. For children, the resilience might stand for successful adaptation of extreme traumatic conditions like poverty or malnutrition (Shastri, 2013). Studies in this area suggest that resilience is not a rigid attribute but can be cultivated through effort, time and practice. This can be achieved through three methods which can be generally considered as skill acquisition, goal setting, and controlled exposure.
Skill acquisition: Academic evidence suggests that mastery of new skill can enhance the skill acquisition as its increases problem solving capability and the self- esteem of an individual. Skills can be different to each individual. For some it can be emotional and cognitive skills like active listening whereas for another it can be new hobbies, activities or pursuits (Colding & Barthel, 2013).
Goal setting: Many academic researchers suggest that setting goal helps to develop resilience as it develops will power. Setting of goals can be dependent on the individual choice and capabilities. For instance, a goal can be physical exercise for some individual whereas for others it might be emotional goal such as visiting and interacting with friends and family more often. Although, some academics argues that setting of goals involving religious or volunteering event can be particularly helpful for the development of resilience (Mansfield, 2016).
Controlled exposure: Controlled exposure involves in gradual and slow exposure to the anxiety provoking scenarios to help a person conquer their incapacitating fears. Evidence suggests that it can help cultivate resilience and researchers argued that it can even double or triple the development comparing to goal setting and skill acquisition. To cite one example, people with phobia of public speaking can develop their resilience by acquiring this skill by slowly practising this in step by step manner (Vanhove et al., 2016).
To this measure, Australian government and many state government has taken various initiative and programs to develop and awareness programs for resilience building.
Achieving mental health through recovery oriented care practice
Recovery and cure is not the same thing and recovery means an individual’s ability to gain or retain his/her former capabilities regarding personal autonomy, active life engagement, sense of self and social identity (Slade & Longden, 2015). Recovery oriented mental health services have some principles to be followed to deliver support for mental health patients. These principles are uniqueness of a human being, attitudes and rights, real choices, partnership and communication, respect and dignity, and evaluation recovery practice. Uniqueness of a human being accepts that recovery outcome is personal and unique to each individual as well as makes them understand that they are the centre of the care. Attitude and rights promotes the individual’s human, legal and citizenship’s right along with developing social and recreational activities. This also installs hope for their future and abilities in themselves. Real choices involves in helping an individual make their own choices to lead their life. Dignity and respect necessitate to being respectful, honest and courteous in every situation. Communication and partnership helps them to understand the values of sharing information and importance of early communication. Finally, recovery evaluation means that the care givers and individual can track their own progress and the mental health system will report on the outcomes to indicate recovery which includes employment, housing, education, well being, and family and social relationships (Slade et a., 2014). The Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network has recognized four tools to assess the recover orientation services which are Recovery Self-assessment (RSA), Recovery Promotion Fidelity Scale (RPFS), Recovery oriented Systems Indicators Measure (ROSI), and Recovery-oriented Practices Index (ROPI).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that mental health is as important as physical health for total well being. However, still now, mental health is largely neglected due to social stigma and unawareness. Various social, socio-economic and political factors such as social status, income, work environment, education and physical environment can be detrimental to mental health. Fortunately, lots of research has been going on in this field and organization like WHO are taking measure to raise awareness about mental health. Along with that, Australian government has also taken various promotional initiatives to mitigate the risk of mental health. Furthermore, building resilience within and proper recovery care practice can help recover an individual totally. Therefore, it can be said that mental health issues are big risk to current global condition but can be mitigated easily with promotional activities, awareness and proper treatment and early intervention.
References
About National Empowerment Project. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.nationalempowermentproject.org.au/about-us
Aneshensel, C. S., Phelan, J. C., & Bierman, A. (2013). The sociology of mental health: Surveying the field. In Handbook of the sociology of mental health (pp. 1-19). Springer, Dordrecht.
Colding, J., & Barthel, S. (2013). The potential of ‘Urban Green Commons’ in the resilience building of cities. Ecological economics, 86, 156-166.
Department of Health | National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/mental-pub-atsi-suicide-prevention-strategy
Department of Health |Barriers to accessing health care access. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/whdp-09~whdp-09-ch5~whdp-09-ch5-2~whdp-09-ch5-2-3
Giedd, J. N., Raznahan, A., Alexander-Bloch, A., Schmitt, E., Gogtay, N., & Rapoport, J. L. (2015). Child psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging study of human brain development. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(1), 43.
History – Be You. (2018). Retrieved from https://beyou.edu.au/history
Kinchin, I., & Doran, C. M. (2018). The cost of youth suicide in Australia. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(4), 672.
Mansfield, C. F., Beltman, S., Broadley, T., & Weatherby-Fell, N. (2016). Building resilience in teacher education: An evidenced informed framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 77-87.
Mental Health Community Support Services. (2018). Retrieved from https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/mental-health/mental-health-services/services-by-type/mental-health-community-support-services
Mental health in the workplace | Australian Human Rights Commission. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/2010-workers-mental-illness-practical-guide-managers/1-mental-health-workplace#fn3
Mind Australia | Community mental health services. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.mindaustralia.org.au/
Model WHS Laws. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/law-and-regulation/model-whs-laws
National Health Survey: Mental Health and co-existing physical health conditions, Australia, 2014 – 15. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/0/C0A4290EF1E7E7FDCA257F1E001C0B84?Opendocument
Parker, R., & Milroy, H. (2014). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health: an overview. Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice. 2nd ed. Canberra: Department of The Prime Minister and Cabinet, 25-38.
Ross, C. E. (2017). Social causes of psychological distress. Routledge.
Shastri, P. C. (2013). Resilience: Building immunity in psychiatry. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(3), 224.
Slade, M., & Longden, E. (2015). Empirical evidence about recovery and mental health. BMC psychiatry, 15(1), 285.
Slade, M., Amering, M., Farkas, M., Hamilton, B., O’Hagan, M., Panther, G., … & Whitley, R. (2014). Uses and abuses of recovery: implementing recovery?oriented practices in mental health systems. World Psychiatry, 13(1), 12-20.
Vanhove, A. J., Herian, M. N., Perez, A. L., Harms, P. D., & Lester, P. B. (2016). Can resilience be developed at work? A meta?analytic review of resilience?building programme effectiveness. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 278-307.
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