Lesson 1: Foundations of Community Mental Health and Illness
Attention
Community Mental Health is about COMMUNITY!
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:
- Define community, community mental health, mental health, and mental illness.
- Describe the history of mental illness.
- Explain how community affects mental health.
Teaching
Lecture
Community mental health, while conceptually a new idea, has always been at the heart of mental health and helping individuals with mental illness.
Community mental health is a way to provide mental health treatment and support for people with mental illnesses. Community-based care is designed to decrease the need for more costly inpatient mental health care delivered in hospitals. Community mental health care may be more accessible and responsive to an individual's local needs because it is based in a variety of community settings rather than isolating patients and patient care in hospitals. Community mental health assessment, which has grown into a science called psychiatric epidemiology, is a field of research measuring rates of mental disorder upon which mental health care systems can be developed and evaluated (from http://www.minddisorders.com/Br-Del/Community-mental-health.html).
Click HERE to read the Wikipedia entry on Community Mental Health.
Read the brief article about the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 (click/touch link): Community Mental Health Act of 1963. This articles provides a bit of history around when community mental health services really began to expand in the United States.
Read the article about the 2013 White House Conference on Mental Health: President Obama's White House Conference on Mental Health.
"The World Health Organization defines mental health as "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his/her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and can make a contribution to his/her community." Healthy functionality for less than perfect people is what it boils down to. ... Mental health is as genuine as any other aspect of a person’s health. When an individual is experiencing thought or behavior patterns that negatively impact their quality of life, it is appropriate to address them, just as any other health concern should be addressed. People with mental illnesses are able to recover, but usually only when the problem is confronted and dealt with directly" (By Elements Behavioral Health posted on October 5, 2011 in News and Research, retrieved from https://www.elementsbehavioralhealth.com/news-and-research/mental-health-stigma/).
Stigma is a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have about something (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stigma).
The term stigma is frequently used when talking about the reasons why an individual may not seek treatment for mental health issues. There is a belief that an individual should be able to just overcome bouts of sadness (depression), tough up in challenging situations (anxiety), forget about the bad thing that happened (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/PTSD). As mental health professionals we recognized that individuals with mental health issues need support, treatment and monitoring just like individuals with other medical conditions do. We would not want to stigmatize someone with cancer to not seek treatment but that is exactly what we do for individuals with depression, anxiety or PTSD sometimes.
"We don’t ridicule or stigmatize people with genetic/physiological illnesses, so why should it be so with mental health conditions? Left undiagnosed and untreated, mental illness can develop into worse problems. In addition to the toll it may take on interpersonal relationships, unemployment, disability and even suicidal tendencies can result. Given the gravity of the situation, it is doubly concerning that fear of stigma keeps people from admitting their pain and seeking help to overcome it. We needn’t be a "let it all hang out" culture in order to compassionately respond when others (or we ourselves) find the complexities of life a bit overwhelming" (By Elements Behavioral Health posted on October 5, 2011 in News and Research, retrieved from https://www.elementsbehavioralhealth.com/news-and-research/mental-health-stigma/).
Blackboard Structure of Classes in the Mental Health Program
Each Lesson in this course is going to be outlined in a similar manner as this Lesson.
Each Lesson will have an Attention graphic, a Learning Outcomes section, a Teaching section, and a list of Assessment (quizzes and discussion) activites that you have to complete. These may include quizzes (questions that you enter directly into Blackboard through an online quiz), Assignments (these are papers that you create in a word processor or on your iPad and upload to a "Drop Box" in Blackboard), and Discussions (these are online forums where I will ask you to consider and discuss delicate and controversial topics). Discussions are primarily for the online students but all students will still see the Discussion questions.
Special Assignments relate to Essential Learning Outcomes for this course (an institution-wide initiative). Essential Learning Outcomes involve an college wide process to identify specific learning outcomes like oral presentation skills or critical thinking.
It is vital to your learning and your grade that you participate in EVERY aspect of the course.
Assessment
Lesson 1 Quiz (to be completed in Blackboard)
- What are your current thoughts on what Community Mental Health is? Have you had personal experiences accessing the community mental health system? Share what that experience was like for you.
- What role does stigma have for individuals who are considering seeking treatment for mental health issues? How do you think you, as an individual training to be a mental health worker, can fight stigma in your environment (home, family, work, school)?
Lesson 1 Discussion (for online students only)
To get full credit for the online graded discussions you need to write a thoughtful reponse to the question (create a thread) and then reply to at least TWO other students' posts. Your reply posts must be substantive in nature (more than one to two sentences). See the grading rubric in the syllabus for more information. These instructions will apply to ALL graded discussions and will not be repeated.
Share your thoughts about the two article about the United State's goverment's steps to provide community mental health services to American's. Were you surprised by the dates when these acts were created and focused efforts to help individuals with mental illness occurred? Share any new information that you learned from these articles.