The Challenge of Preventing Mental Illness
The medical model of Western medicine follows a very predictable pattern: live your life, and when something goes wrong (pain, injury, sickness, etc.), then seek treatment. Treatment usually involves one or more of the following: testing, medication, hospitalization, and/or surgery. We don’t hear much about prevention, which is designed to help us avoid being in a position where we need to be treated.
The mental health field generally follows closely the medical model when it comes to treating illness. We wait until we can no longer function under the heavy stress of daily life, or our relationship with our spouse or teen is near the breaking point, or we are on the cusp of losing our job. It is at these crisis points that most people reach out for help.
And what does positive psychology have to say about how we might reverse some of the negative trends we see in mental health these days? Earlier in the course, you learned about strength-based approaches that focus on the positive aspects of a person’s life instead of what is “wrong” with them. When you help a person use their strengths to navigate around the problem areas, it infuses them with confidence and optimism about the future.
What if we took it one step further and applied positive psychology principles and focused these on a preventive approach to mental health? What would that look like? With an honest assessment our strengths, we could be more deliberate about living by our values and goals before we reach a crisis point. What if we slowed our lives down to decrease the stress we are under, chose to get more sleep, paid more attention to the important relationships in our life, made better choices about self-care, and lived by our stated core values instead of succumbing to the limitless pressures that crush us?
Prevention is a hard concept to practice because it requires us to take inventory of where we are, where we’ve been, and where we want to go. Then comes the hard part: making changes based on this assessment.
As it stands now, the prognosis for the mental health of the world, and of the United States in particular, is not good. Rates of suicide attempts, anxiety, depression, and relationship and family breakups are all on the rise. It doesn’t appear that trend will reverse anytime soon. Does that mean we should give up and stop keep trying to work toward preventive measures?
In this final assignment of the course, you have the opportunity to think through where we are in this present state of mental health and what role you might play in trying to slow the decline of mental health.
Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:
· Assess the potential for preventive measures to improve the societal rates of mental illness.
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Resources
· Web Article: Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Health
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Background Information
In this assignment, you will explore how we as a country and you as an individual might change the trajectory of mental illness: how it evolves, manifests, and is treated. First, read the assigned article “Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Health” and then consider doing additional research to explore the problem in greater depth to get a solid sense of how important this idea of preventive mental health can be to the future of our society.
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Instructions
1. Read the article, Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Health .
2. In at least five substantial paragraphs, respond to the following prompts:
a. Why do you think prevention of mental illness is such a hard concept for both lawmakers and the general population to get behind and support?
b. What do you see as the biggest societal hurdle that slows or stops our ability to implement more preventive measures toward better mental health?
c. Describe at least one positive psychology principle that you’ve learned in the course that could be applied toward prevention of mental health issues. Explain in detail.
d. The assigned article says, “Studies show that half of those who will develop mental health disorders show symptoms by age 14.” Given what you read earlier in the course about the prevalence of ACEs, what can be done to improve the mental health of our children?
3. If you use additional research in your paper, be sure to include the in-text citations and a reference page at the end of your paper in correct APA Style format.
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