Mental Health
Introduction
Mental health refers to the social, psychological, emotional well-being of a person. Mental health is one of the most essential element in the life stages of a human-being from childhood puberty and through adulthood. Any problems with the mental health of an individual could affect mood, thinking, and even the person’s behavior. When mental health persists, it leads to mental illness. This paper will analyze the various aspects of mental disease, including causal factors, categories of mental health, diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment.
Causes of Mental Illness
Environmental or genetic factors might cause mental illness. Sometimes the combination of the two factors might surface hence affecting the individual’s mental health. Environmental factors refer to the dynamics that surround individuals and servers to expose them to psychological problems. Environmental factors include stressors such as trauma and abuse (Link et al., 1999). Stressful situations such as loss of a loved one, divorce, and financial problems might also act as triggers to mental instability hence illness. The second cause of the mental illness is brain chemistry, where the chemicals that are involves as neurotransmitters become impaired, leading to emotional disorders and depression. The third causal agent of mental illness is genetic; inherited traits from blood relatives can be transferred down the family line through genes. Some particular genes increase the risk of developing mental health problems and can only be triggered by life situations. Other causes include drug and substance abuse, mother’s exposure, and severe medical conditions.
Categories of Mental Health
There are several different categories of mental illness. The most common ones entail depression, bipolar disorder, mood swings, and post-traumatic stress disorders (Watts, 2017). Bipolar disorder is a depressive illness characterized by violent mood swings—a person suffering from bipolar sickness experiences a series of severely high and low moods. Other common forms include psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety disorders like panic disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) entails wild obsessions that trigger compulsions.
Mental Illness Diagnoses
Mental illness can be diagnosed using a multi-step process that comprises of physical examination and laboratory tests. The first step of diagnosis is done by examining the medical history of the individual, including a history of mental illness in the family. The second step is usually the physical examination and possibly the lab tests to prove where there are medical conditions behind the cause of the mental disorder. The third and last step of diagnosis is conducted by a psychology specialist and often entails asking the patients questions about their behaviors, feelings, and thinking.
Symptoms of Mental Illness
Although different triggers cause different categories of mental health, most of them share the same symptoms. Some of the common signs and symptoms of mental illness include;
- Insomnia and oversleeping
- Isolation and socially distancing oneself from friends and family.
- Lack of appetite or, in some cases, excessive appetite for food.
- Anxiety, confusion, and sadness.
- Sequences of extreme low and high moods.
- Suicidal thoughts.
- Inability to carry out daily chores and activities.
- Low levels of sanitation.
- Characteristic flashbacks that are constant and cannot be gotten rid of.
- Aggressiveness causing frequent arguments and fights with friends with family and friends.
- Substance and drug abuse.
- Fatigue and sleeplessness.
Treatment Options Available For Mental Illness
For mental health, treatment is not available on a one-fits-all basis since it varies from one patient to another; hence the best treatment option must be recommended. Treatment of mental illness is not curative but instead are meant to suppress the symptoms and allow the patient to recover naturally. In most cases, medical specialists recommend a combination of treatments since some mental conditions require a multi-angle approach to achieve a better result.
Conventional treatments include medications, psychotherapy, residential and hospital treatment, and lifestyle treatment. The medication prescribed to a mental health patient normally depends on the health issues and symptoms displayed by the patient. Four major types of medicines prescribed to mental health patients include mood-stabilizing drugs, antipsychotic drugs, anti-anxiety medication, and antidepressants (Dixon, Holoshitz & Nossel, 2016). Psychotherapy refers to a one to one talk therapy between the patient and a psychologist. The patient is expected to open up their feelings, experiences, ideas, and thoughts to the mental health provider who will, in turn, advise the patient on the best methods to help them cope with the mental condition and overcome the symptoms. Residential treatments entail engaging patients in brief periods of intensive care in health facilities to allow for 24-hour supervision and medication programs. Lifestyle treatment requires the patient to adopt a healthy diet and exercise that benefits the brain and mental stability.
Conclusion
Mental health refers to the social, psychological, emotional well-being of a person. Environmental or genetic factors might cause mental illness. Environmental factors refer to the dynamics that surround individuals and servers to expose them to psychological problems. Stressful situations such as loss of a loved one, divorce, and financial issues might also act as triggers to mental instability hence illness. Other causes include drug and substance abuse, mother’s exposure, and serious medical conditions. Mental illness can be categorized into depression, bipolar disorder, mood swings, post-traumatic stress disorders. Mental illness can be diagnosed using a multi-step process that comprises of physical examination and laboratory tests. Conventional treatments include medications, psychotherapy, residential and hospital treatment, and lifestyle treatment.
References
Dixon, L. B., Holoshitz, Y., & Nossel, I. (2016). Treatment engagement of individuals
experiencing mental illness: review and update. World Psychiatry, 15(1), 13-20.
Link, B. G., Phelan, J. C., Bresnahan, M., Stueve, A., & Pescosolido, B. A. (1999). Public
conceptions of mental illness: labels, causes, dangerousness, and social distance. American journal of public health, 89(9), 1328-1333.
Watts, J. (2017). Is mental illness real? You asked Google-here’s the answer. The Guardian.