Reflective Essay on My Current Attitudes and Values towards Mental Health and People with Mental Illness
Introduction
Issues about mental health and people with mental is now a pressing public concern, drawing away from the idea that mental health is a private matter that should be dealt closed doors. Becoming a discernible social problem, mental health and the concerns encompassing it is now a subject of apprehension of the people. However, the attitudes and values of the people about it and the people affected remains in a sphere of prejudice, stereotypes and subjectivity. Mental health has biological, psychological and social reasons behind it, leading to social stigmatism. Despite the sophisticated treatment today and the high levels of regulation, mental health and people with mental illness remain to be under the scrutiny and judgment of the public thereby mental health stigmatism.
My personal viewpoint
I am not excluding myself as I am indifferent myself about the topic. Nonetheless, I am well aware that being unresponsive to mental health issues especially when it comes to those who are affected by mental disorders could only cultivate discriminatory attitudes. Whenever I see a person with mental illness, I always ponder on how it feels like to be like him or her. Or, did they feel at all or not. I also think of things such as what they are thinking, what do they know about themselves and why did it happened to them. Will it happen to me? These are the things that I commonly asked when I see one. However, I also know that I am not the only whose thinking about all those things. But come to think of it, how will you feel if you know someone living in your neighborhood as mentally ill?
This is not to say that I am rejecting the reality that mental challenges among people exist. It is. And I am not excuse in acquiring mental disorders. It’s just that it feels like they are existing on a very different world than I do. One thing I know is for sure, mental health is increasingly becoming a serious health problem which must be addressed, medical-wise, in an efficient manner. This is because the number of people with mental illness is growing so the necessity to obtain a cure-all drug, if possible, and not just expensive treatments which only delays the more staid condition. I am not saying that the professional help is futile since a more perennial reality is that one time in our lives we are all going to consult a psychiatrist, psychologist or mental health professionals, most especially during these trying times (Borinstein, 1992).
The psychosocial schema of stigmatism
A model which clearly explains the phenomenon of acquiring disease and illness is the biopsychosocial model, which emphasizes that several biological, psychological and social elements affects human functioning. The foundations of the model suggest that there are specific elements that influence how people maintain health, develop illness and disease and respond to the disease or illness; proposing that health problems are dependent not just on a single domain of human experience, as Brandon and Feist (2006) put it. Elucidated by the body-mind connection, functioning of the body affects the mind and the functioning of the mind affects the body. Relating to stress, judgment, and the inadequacy of, of the importance people associate with those events affects the management of internal and external demands of events with respect to our resources. One’s ability to cope with these stressors based on the individual’s appraisal is optimal then.
As such, the taboos surrounding mental illness mitigate against openness and honesty from those suffering stress (Priest and Welch, 1998, p. 15). It is of my best belief that stressors are a significant contributor to the emergence of mental illness. These maybe intrinsic or could be brought by environmental factors, with an emphasis on the latter. Mental Health America reported that most Americans deal with major life stressors in their lives including finances, health issues and employment (Sexton and Cobb, n.d.), resulting to major mental disturbances. Important to note is that when Americans failed to cope with macro-level, they are more prone to drinking, smoking and taking drugs, leading to mental illnesses. Nevertheless, although most Americans knew about the consequences of being overly stressed, we are more hostile. Taking from this, we are becoming unsympathetic because we know to ourselves that those people with mental illness could be once as normal as we are, but they did not took care of themselves when they had the chance to.
Development of public stigmatism
Julien (2001) made mentioned that stigmatism is the most formidable obstacle to future progress in the arena of mental illness and health (p. 367). Indeed, hostility is the common thinking where people might find difficulty in sympathizing when they know that mental illness is self-inflicted while there are others who just find intricacies communicating and empathizing with these people simply because they cannot relate with them, and such thoughts have their own rationale. The public, including me, grown accustomed with labellings that is why I think of people with mental illness as always violent and dangerous aside from being unpredictable. We are fed by too much images of people with mental illness inside asylums, scudding and always in conflict with caring assistants, nurses and other professionals. Wahl (1997) figured that the use and misuse of words including disparaging and disrespectful words is a commonplace in media, underempowering those persons with mental illness (p. 14).
While at it, it would be also plausible to look at how our negative attitudes are likely to develop. Based on my observation, there are several ways to leverage our knowledge, perhaps through the media, magazines, radio and books. But the more pressing issue here is the credibility of these informations that we are choosing and how they are going to impact our daily lives. Pejorative terms are common, echoing another concern area focusing on the role of media about negative reporting on mental health and people with mental illness. Media is more particular with incidental stories which feature conflicts, human interest, bizarre and sensational instead of responsible journalism, same with television. People with mental illness are often portrayed as sadistic, outlandish and unwise, exploiting them while also trivializing their condition.
Why stigmatism prevails?
These perception of reality stresses that, however, our innate reality does not always represent the true realities of life. As such, we interpret the world as we understand it. Such a modeling theory is very true in perceiving mental health concerns and people with mental distress, suggesting that there is a reality that exists beyond points and these may not always conform to what we hold as real. According to Arsham (2008), an individual the outside world through his/her physical sense of perceptions, which is true. People as thinkers process and analyze informations through mental activities to form an interpretation, an explanation why there is the necessity to validate or confirm our interpretations. We then represent the interpretation as understanding as if it is indeed the reality itself. Nonetheless, the outside world appearances to the mind are of four kinds: what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be.
A question noteworthy of asking is: how are we going to be affected by our own negative values about mental health and people with mental illness? Knowingly, there are two things prevalent: institutionalized stigmatism and individualized stigmatism. Primarily, there are conducted researches that mental health professionals themselves as well as the mental health staff show no genuine concern to their patients, contributing to the poor quality of life of these people. When they are subjected to public attention, nothing would be changed, these people will still be perceived as dangerous/violent. The anticipated negative attitudes are also the reasons why people chose to deal with mental distress inclusive to their family members (Flory, 1998). The individualized stigmatism, on the other hand, always conforms to our own subjectivity like my perceptions and questions.
Based on my learning about the issue, I cannot consider myself as well-informed because I know there are many things to learn about mental illness as well as to confirm whether what I have learned already are correct. But I believe that all groups of people could acquire mental disorders. Though this cannot eliminate stigma as attached to the phenomenon of mental distress, this is an indication that people recognize the need to be somehow educated about the condition. Educational approaches to changing stigma shall center contrasting myths with facts about mental illness (Corrigan et al, 2007, p. 412).
Kowalski and Leary (2004) suggest that there are three types of strategies that stigma will be lessened if could not be totally eliminated. These are protest, education and contact, making stigma-reduction armamentarium (p. 262). Notably, ignorance and misinformation is inevitable albeit the wealth of anti-stigma campaign and other ongoing efforts of public awareness. So, it would be a requirement to always consider to educate oneself not just about mental health as well as the ways of proper treatment to people with mental illness thereby avoid negative uncaring attitudes.
Conclusion
Notably, stigmatism is not totally abolished albeit the anti-stigma and public awareness campaigns. I am not excluding myself as a part of the general public who contributes to stigmatism. There are two types of stigmatism: institutionalized and individualized. The existence of mental challenges among people is developed through the combination of biological, psychological and social factors. Nevertheless, the perception of the people regarding the issue is shaped by the modeling theory wherein we perceived things based on what it appears to be. That is why it is very easy for media and other communications instruments to influence our beliefs, attitudes and values. As I see it, education would be the key in combating the negative public attitudes about mental health and stigmatism on people who are mentally challenged.
Reference:
Arsham, H. (2008). The Science of Making Decisions. Social Science.
Borinstein, A. (1992). Public Attitudes Toward Persons with Mental Illness. Data Watch, 186-197.
Brannon, L. and Feist, J. (1007). Health Psychology: An Introduction to Behaviour and Health. Michigan: Wadsworth Publishing, Co.
Corrigan, P. W., Mueser, K. T., Bond, G. R., Drake, R. E. and Solomon, P. (2007). Principles and Practice of Psychiatric Rehabilitation: An Empirical Approach. Guilford Press.
Flory, L. (1998). Public attitudes to mental distress. Retrieved on 29 October 2008, from http://www.mind.org.
Julien, R. M. (2001). A Primer of Drug Action: A Concise Nontechnical Guide to the Actions, Uses and Side Effects of Psychoactive Drugs. Henry Holt & Company.
Kowalski, R. M. and Leary, M. R. (2004). The Interface of Social and Clinical Psychology. Psychology Press.
Priest, S. and Welch, J. (1998). Creating a Stress-free Office: Gower Management Workbooks. Gower Publishing, Ltd.
Sexton, E. and Cobb, H. (n.d.). Americans Reveal Top Stressors, How They Cope. Mental Health America. Retrieved on 29 October 2008, from http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net.
Wahl, O. F. (1997). Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness. Rutgers University Press.
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