CBA928: Mental Health And Illness Assignment Sample

Mental Health And Illness Assignment Sample

Introduction Of Mental Health And Illness Assignment Sample

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Task 1

Lack of tests and deviances are two difficulties faced by doctors or psychologists to declare or define a person as normal or abnormal.

Lack of tests

In this era of technological advancements where the medical sciences and testing equipment are growing rapidly the providing instant results, there are no tests that can define accurately that a person is abnormal or normal. Psychologists and doctors always rely on the signs, symptoms, and subjective criteria for analyzing that whether the person is abnormal or not. The analysis conducted by the doctor or psychologists does not indicate that the results are accurate. The psychologists observe the behavior whether it is extreme or bizarre, unpleasant or upsetting behavior, disruptive behavior which can be dangerous and harm self or others (Wanget al. 2018). These aspects indicate the idea about the difficulties in defining the normality or abnormality as the psychologists are deprived of tests and accurate way of defining.

Deviances

Another difficulty that is observed in defining the abnormalities and normality is the deviances from the cultural and statistical norms. It is observed that every culture has certain standards and norms as well as behavioral aspects which are acceptable and those who differ from those behaviors are considered to be abnormal (Chadwick, 2017). For example, thirty years ago womenhaving short hairs were not accepted by the culture in India and this is the reason many people use to term such women as abnormal because they deviate from the cultural norms but with time the norms have changed so this indicates that there is no accurate definition to consider someone as normal or abnormal. Statistically, most people belong to a middle range of height and those who are too much tall are considered to be abnormal, but many consider that this is not a parameter to define a person as normal or abnormal. Therefore, these are the possible difficulties that are observed while defining abnormality and normality.

Task 2

Schizophrenia is a type of chronic brain disorder that affects the brain of an individual and affects his or her life adversely. Schizophrenia is a disease that requires lifelong treatment even if it is observed that the symptoms are not visible in the patient (McCutcheonet al. 2020). It is observed that medical and psychological therapies are used for treating a patient suffering from schizophrenia and there are several instances when the patients are also hospitalized. There are various ways through which a schizophrenic patient is treated across the world, two of the best ways which can be used for treating a schizophrenia patient from different psychological perspectives like medical and psychodynamic processes of treatment are discussed below:

Use of first and second-generation medications for treating schizophrenia [Medical perspective]

The medications are the main part of the treatment of schizophrenia and antipsychotic medicines are the medicines that are mostly prescribed by doctors for treating schizophrenia biologically/medically. Antipsychotic medicines are considered to controls the symptoms of schizophrenia as they affect the brain neurotransmitter dopamine of an individual. The doctors and the psychiatrists try different drugs and different types of combinations of medicines which can help the patient and reduce the issues. Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs are also used for treating schizophrenic patients.

Two types of antipsychotics are used for treating schizophrenic patients first and second-generation antipsychotics. It is always observed that the medicines which are used for the treatment of schizophrenic patients have serious side effects.

First-generation antipsychotics

The first-generation antipsychotics are observed to have potentially higher side effects but considerably cheaper than the newly developed medicines (Bahtaet al. 2021). The first-generation antipsychotics which are used for treating schizophrenic patients are:

• Chlorpromazine
• Fluphenazine
• Haloperidol
• Perphenazine

Second-generation antipsychotics

Second-generation antipsychotics are the most preferred medications for schizophrenic patients as they have lower side effects compared to the first-generation ones. These medicines are also considered to have higher rates. Some of the second-generation medicines are listed below:

• Cariprazine
• Aripiprazole
• Brexpiprazole
• Asenapine
• Lurasidone
• Ziprasidone
• Risperidone
• Clozapine

These are the medicines that are used by psychiatrists for treating the patients suffering from this disease and the treatment is carried out using injections. The treatment process is chosen to be injections as it becomes easier for the medicine to reach the muscles and nerves easily as most of the medicines are considerable intra-muscular or subcutaneous (Buhagiarand Jabbar, 2019). It is also observed that the patients who are suffering from this disease are not getting positive results through the use of these medicines than the psychiatrists try to hospitalize the patient and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used in the hospital for treating the patients. ECT is considered to be one of the best treatment processes for treating patients suffering from depression.

Use of Supportive psychodynamic psychotherapy (SPP) [Psychodynamic perspective]

It is observed that in recent times the use of psychodynamic psychotherapy is very less in comparison to the other medical treatments as it is said that the medicines can provide results faster than psychodynamic therapy. On the other hand, it is also true that medication has a higher rate of side effects and can affect the patients permanently. To treat schizophrenic patients many psychiatrists consider that psychodynamic psychotherapy is the best way for the treatment of the patients in the most effective manner and it is considerably more effective (Kongaraet al. 2017). The psychodynamic treatment which is used by the psychiatrists is named "Supportive psychodynamic psychotherapy" (SPP). This treatment process is considered to be very much slower than the biological/medical procedure but considered to be very much effective. It is observed that the schizophrenic patients if following the SPP treatment procedure properly then within two years of proper treatment the patient will be able to see a significant gain in the social functioning and there will be decrement observed in the maladaptive symptoms. The fundamental aspects of the psychodynamic therapy on which the psychiatrists are needed to work on are listed below:

• Helping them to overcome the obstacles to emotional processing with the help of different situations.
• Analyzing their mental functioning especially the sense of self.
• The development and maintaining the relational bonds with the family members and friends (Stijažiüet al. 2017).

These are some of the major aspects which are needed to be followed by psychiatrists for treating patients suffering from schizophrenia. It is very essential for carrying the treatment effect that cognitive development and attention to the present are needed to be incorporated with the treatment processes which will help them to bring the maximum amount of benefits for the patients and ensure better chances to resolve these issues. It is also considered by many psychiatrists that if psychodynamic psychotherapy is used as a supplement to the medicinal or social treatment modalities then it can bring better results for the people who are struggling because of this issue.

References

Bahta, M., Ogbaghebriel, A., Russom, M., Tesfamariam, E.H. and Berhe, T., 2021. Impact of adverse reactions to first-generation antipsychotics on treatment adherence in outpatients with schizophrenia: a cross-sectional study. Annals of general psychiatry, 20(1), pp.1-7.

Buhagiar, K. and Jabbar, F., 2019. Association of first-vs. second-generation antipsychotics with lipid abnormalities in individuals with severe mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical drug investigation, 39(3), pp.253-273.

Chadwick, R., 2017. Normality as convention and as scientific fact. Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine, 1st ed. Netherlands: Springer, pp.17-28.

Kongara, S., Douglas, C., Martindale, B. and Summers, A., 2017. Individual psychodynamic therapy for psychosis: a Delphi study. Psychosis, 9(3), pp.216-224.

McCutcheon, R.A., Marques, T.R. and Howes, O.D., 2020. Schizophrenia—an overview. JAMA psychiatry, 77(2), pp.201-210.

Stijažiü, D., Jendrižko, T. and Biožina, S.M., 2017. Guidelines for individual and group psychodynamic psychotherapy for the treatment of persons diagnosed with psychosis and/or schizophrenia. Psychiatria Danubina, 29(3), pp.432-440.

Wang, S., Zeng, Y., Liu, Q., Zhu, C., Zhu, E. and Yin, J., 2018, October. Detecting abnormality without knowing normality: A two-stage approach for unsupervised video abnormal event detection. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM international conference on Multimedia (pp. 636-644).