Hwo can a mental health professional know what they r talking about if they just keep asking questions and ask you to keep talking about your life situations with them. If they knew some really good advice, wouldn’t there be no issues to keep you coming back for their services?
Spirituality has been defined as the belief and practices that develop based on personal values and an ideology of the meaning and purpose of life as part of a larger scheme. It refers to the belief that there is a power outside of one’s own that transcends understanding.
For many individuals identifying with a religion and having religious beliefs influence their spirituality. However spirituality is not confined to those who belonging to an organized religion or have religious beliefs. People can develop spirituality without practicing a particular religion or believing in the powers of a supreme being. However, whatever is the nature of their spirituality, many individuals achieve a sense of inner peace and harmony as well as emotional fulfillment by believing that life has a purpose. Consequently a breakdown in spirituality can have a negative impact on one’s mental well-being and can lead to mental health disorders.
In my view spirituality and religiosity are interrelated with religiosity focusing on the external expressions of spirituality or faith. In other words religious practices can foster spirituality while spiritual practices could involve aspects of religious participation.
The a key issue here is that whether changing their lives to improve their health or dealing with the recovery from a health problem, people with strong spiritual/religious belief benefit from the foundation of confidence and purpose that their beliefs provide.
Now let’s look at what is spirituality from three dimensions. They are:
a.Making personal meaning out of situations
b.Coming to an understanding of self
c.Appreciating the importance of connection with others.
Spirituality/religion then may be considered a mechanism of social support, positive coping, and decision-making, avoidance of substance abuse, and help in times of stress.
In one study conducted with 211 African-American college students, researchers found that students with religious, intrinsic, or extrinsic religious orientations were more likely to engage in health promoting behaviors, including eating well, reporting symptoms to a physician, and using stress management techniques. Higher worship attendance frequently was associated with a lower risk for the development of mental health issues such as mood, anxiety, and substance disorders.
It has also been found that people who make religion a significant part of their life are 81% less likely to battle anxiety and depression and is more likely to have confidence that they can recover from an illness.
It is important therefore for practitioners working in the area of mental health disorders to provide the patient which opportunity to engage in dialogue about the role of spirituality/religion in their lives. Such questions as: Is religion or faith important part of your life? How has religion influenced your past and present? Are you a part of a spiritual or faith community? and, Are there spiritual needs you would like to explore or discuss? After exploring these questions, the practitioner can then move on with an appropriate intervention.
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by Feggy Art
Many mental health advocates are cheering healthcare reform. Although there was a separate bill requiring mental health parity in insurance coverage–meaning that it should be treated equally to physical conditions when it comes to benefits–passed in 2008, this legislation goes farther. Here are five facts about the health insurance reform bill and its impact on the treatment of mental health conditions.
With the eventual ban from denying people with pre-existing conditions, those with mental health conditions will have easier access to affordable health insurance. Many times, health insurers refuse to underwrite someone with a diagnosis of depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. That is regardless of how well-controlled the condition may be, and regardless of their physical health. The newly passed bill changes that. Insurers will also no longer be allowed to exclude that particular condition from any coverage they extend.
Small businesses with under 50 employees are now subject to the mental health parity laws, while they were not under the previous bill. Their previous exclusion was due to the increased cost of coverage, but Democrats and other supporters of reform believe that the upcoming exchange markets (run by the states) will assist small employers. The plans sold in the exchanges will meet the parity standards.
The bill doesn’t necessarily mean that people will receive gold-plated mental health coverage. Instead, it states that the coverage should be equal to physical health coverage. If someone picks a bare-bones, high-deductible health insurance plan, their coverage will be limited all-around. What is outlawed is inequality; for example, an insurer cannot charge a higher co-payment for a psychiatrist visit than they would for any other medical specialist. Neither can they deny a patient the opportunity to receive out-of-network mental health treatment, if patients are allowed to seek medical care out-of-network. Also, they cannot limit the number of visits or days of inpatient treatment for substance abuse or mental illness any more strictly than they would for surgery or physical illnesses.
The elimination of lifetime and annual caps on benefits will also be helpful. Mental health treatment can be very costly. Inpatient rehabilitation for substance abuse or eating disorders can cost tens of thousands of dollars per month, which can quickly eat up the limits of most health insurance plans. Fewer patients will suffer from incomplete treatment due to their inability to afford continued help.
The bill’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility will help the mentally ill, whom many experts believe are more likely to be uninsured. Moreover, all Medicaid coverage (not just managed care programs) will now offer equal coverage for mental health conditions.
Mental health change ahead
BEN HOGWOOD MOREHEAD CITY — The entity that oversees behavioral health in the county will have to merge with another larger entity to meet state requirements.
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by Catholic Church (England and Wales)
Mental wellness is generally conveyed as a conviction or view of a positive credit, such that a person can reach heightened levels of mental health, even if they do not have any identifiable state of mental health.
Lack of mental Disorder:
The absence of a major mental health condition is also defined as the mental health. Nevertheless, the term “mental” is not inevitably used to involve a difference between brain (dys) functioning and mental (dys) functioning, or indeed between the rest of the body and the brain. It is quite contradicted to elevation.
Mood of depression: An individual may feel like to be sad or emptiness or may cry frequently. The understanding and credit of mental disorders has converted from time to time and across cultures.
A broad definition can address substance dependence, mental disorder, personality disorder, and mental retardation.
Symptoms: Disturbances in sleeping: An inability to sleep or sleeping too much is a good symptom of depression.
Depression primer: Depression in physiology and medicine refers to a frowning, in particular a decrease in a particular biological variable or the working of an organ. On certain cases the term “serious mental illness” [SMI] is used to cite to more dangerous and disorder which are long lasting.
The phrase “mental health problems” may be used to refer only to milder or much shorter term issues. The recent manifest stemming from convinced psychology proposes that the health of the brain is more than the mere absence of an illness or mental disorder. If any individual can stop thinking useless and unnecessary thing, which are not to their concern, then they will get a good and fit life.
Changes in weight: Substantial changes in weight when not seeking to gain or lose may be a symptom of depression. In general, however, a mental disorder has been qualified as a clinically substantial pattern for the psychological and behavioral that happens in an individual and is usually linked with disability, distress, or increased risk of suffering. Therefore the forceful consequence of cultural, social, educational, and physical can all affect someone’s mental health.
Mental disorder: A mental disorder or mental illness is a patter relating to behavior or a psychological, that occurs in a person and is believed to cause suffering or impairment that is not anticipated as part of normal growth or culture.
Mental Health- Fact of Depression Primer
Introduction: A state of happy, healthy and prosperous life, in which a person individually understands his or her own powers, can satisfy or fulfill the normal emphasizes of life, can work profitably and productively, and is capable of making a share to his or her group of people is stated as mental health by the World Health Organization (WHO).
There is frequently a standard that a condition should not be anticipated to occur as part of a person’s usual religion or culture.
The classification and definition of mental disorder is a central effect for the mental health and for the providers and users of the services of mental health. Feelings of Worthlessness or Guilt: A demoralized person may feel that they have no assess or they may feel unsuitably guilty about matters they have no control over. Most external documents scientifically apply the term “mental disorder” instead of “mental illness”.
Mental wellbeing:
Mental health can be seen as a continuous no spatial whole or extent or succession in which no part or portion is distinct or distinguishable from adjacent components, where an individual’s mental health may have many unlike possible values.
There is no individual definition and the inclusion standards are said to change depending on the legal, social, and political circumstance. Children and teenagers may display irritability. This definition of mental health highlights emotional well-being, the space to live an entire and originative life, and the flexibility to deal with life’s fate challenges.
Conclusion: Mental health completely depends on the person. In children, this may also acquaint as an unsuccessful person to make expected weight gains.
Mental health court’s influence reaches far
Public officials, as well as defendants, say mental health court provides another tool to help people change.
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Most people think you have to be nuts to do stand-up comedy. However, Vancouver-based counsellor and stand-up comic David Granirer and author of The Happy Neurotic: How Fear and Angst Can Lead To Happiness and Success offers it as a form of therapy. Granirer, whose work was featured in the CBC VOICE Award winning documentary Cracking Up is the founder of Stand Up For Mental Health, a project where people with mental illness turn their problems into comedy, then perform their acts at a showcase. Doing comedy about their illness builds participants self-esteem and helps reduce public stigma around mental illness, says Granirer, who himself suffers from depression. Laughing in the face of pain makes people go from despair to hope, and hope is crucial to anyone struggling with a mental illness. Granirer got the idea for Stand Up For Mental Health from watching students in his Langara College Stand-Up Comedy Clinic course in Vancouver. Ive had students overcome long standing depressions and phobias, not to mention increasing their confidence and self-esteem. Theres something incredibly healing about telling a roomful of people exactly who you are and having them laugh and cheer. Stand Up For Mental Health is now offered across Canada and in the US. www.standupformentalhealth.com
Be My Friend – www.myspace.com The Truth about Mental Disorders. Dr. John Breeding, Ph.D. psychologist discusses how mental disorders are created by the American Psychiatric Association and listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental Disorders. Disorders such as bipolar, ADHD, OCD, Anxiety Disorders, etc. are voted into existence by APA committees. The underlying assumption of biological psychiatry is that mental illness is biologically based despite the fact that no solid …