scholarly journals Barriers to accessing mental health services in The Gambia: patients’/family members’ perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Lamin F. M. Barrow ◽  
Ann Faerden
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Family Education ◽  
Interview Guide ◽  
Family Decision Making

This paper concerns mental health services in The Gambia. It describes local concepts, experiences and knowledge about mental illness and the implications of such beliefs and attitudes for access to mental health services. A pretested questionnaire and interview guide were administered to a sample of patients/family members. Barriers to accessing mental health services were identified. These included beliefs about the causes of mental illness; family decision-making; the scarcity and high cost of services. Obtaining access to mental health services in The Gambia is currently challenging. Importantly, increased community and family education about the causes and treatment of mental illnesses will be required to address these issues.

scholarly journals Przez kwasową psychiatrię do kwasowego komunizmu. Renesans psychodeliczny w psychiatrii jako szansa na zmianę paradygmatu

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-176
Author(s):  
Radosław Stupak
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Status

Mark Fisher wrote „the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.” This paper attempts to develop this thought and show how the repoliticization of issues defined as mental illnesses that could have an emancipatory potential and undermine capitalist realism could look like and how it could be related to the contemporary phenomenon of „psychedelic renaissance”. This repoliticization could constitute the first step towards acid communism – a step that would enable a comprehensive formulation of the project, the imagining of both acid communism itself as well as the road towards it. Even though psychedelics could provide an impulse for the change of the dominant psychiatric paradigm and the reorganization of mental health services, the process of the interception of these substances by the alienating and commodificating orders of psychiatry and capitalism can already be observed, so that both of the intertwined and mutually supporting orders can in fact be strengthened. From this perspective the institution of psychiatry becomes a key element preserving the status quo, which makes the imagining of the end of capitalism impossible. Politicization of mental health, that could question capitalist realism, needs to be connected with the deconstruction of the ideology of psychiatry.

scholarly journals Knowledge of family members on the rights of individuals affected by mental illness

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
Vania Moreno ◽  
Guilherme Correa Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Care Center ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Psychosocial Care ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Therapeutic Activities

The objective of this investigation was to understand what family members know about the rights of individuals affected by mental illness. To this end, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted. A semi-structured interview was used for data collection. Eighteen family members were interviewed at a psychosocial care center (CAPS) and a civil society organization (CSO) located in a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, between March and September 2013. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis and the following categories were constructed: mental health services and the rights of individuals affected by mental illness. We were able to infer that in addition to drug-based therapy, mental health services must provide therapeutic activities. Family members of those affected by mental illness were unaware of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform Law and mentioned the following rights: welfare benefits, free public transport, basic food basket and medications.

Jails and prisons

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Dvoskin ◽  
Melody C. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Face ◽  
One Year ◽  
High Degree

There are many similarities between prisons and jails, especially in regard to the constitutional standard for mental health services. However, the differences are important to recognize in assuring that the unique needs of each kind of institution are met. Historically, jails have been used to hold defendants for trial, and to confine prisoners who have been sentenced for misdemeanors, typically for sentences of less than one year. In contrast, prisons are managed by state or federal governments and used for longer-term confinement of convicted felons, who generally serve sentences of one year or longer. Predominant among these differences is the very high degree of turnover in jail populations, resulting in dramatic increases in acuity of mental illness and substance misuse, significantly increased risk of suicide, and the increases in workload due to the much higher percentage of initial assessments. In contrast, prison mental health services are more often faced with the realities of serious and persistent mental illnesses, and the hopelessness that can come after years of incarceration and in the face of very long sentences. While prison mental health clinicians have more time with which to work, they also face significantly greater expectations for treatment that goes beyond crisis response and psychotropic medication. Distinctions between prisons and jails in terms of service delivery and the kinds of treatment challenges that exist in the long-term management of prisoners with serious mental illness are discussed.

scholarly journals “I Am Not My Illness!”: Navigating the Mental Healthcare System in New Orleans

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Saira Mehmood ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Mental Illnesses

This research examines the experiences of individuals diagnosed with chronic mental illnesses and how they navigated the mental healthcare system in New Orleans, Louisiana. To realize the main research objective, I analyzed how individuals with chronic mental illnesses perceive mental illness and stigma; the services individuals use to address their mental health needs and the barriers they face in this process; who individuals disclose their mental illness to and under what contexts; and how individuals diagnosed with mental illness and their caregivers understand and embody recovery. Situated between medical anthropology and urban anthropology, it examines the challenges individuals diagnosed with chronic mental illness and caregivers encounter in utilizing mental health services. Using critical race theory and studies on whiteness, I analyze the intersectional identities of individuals to understand how various axes of identities such as race, gender, age, and religion affect how people utilize mental health services, conceptualize stigma, how this is related to disclosure, and what recovery means to them. While I use stigma scales to measure various types of stigma, I triangulate this data with observations from participant-observation and interviews to reconceptualize stigma in what Tyler and Slater (2018) argue for approaching the social and political dynamics of stigma and acknowledging history. I do this through the use of stigma syndemics. Central to this is the role of mental health professionals and other key stakeholders, and how they interact with individuals utilizing community mental health services. I examine how past experiences such as trauma and incarceration limit access to housing programs, employment, and how this affects recovery. Lastly, I argue that for effective advocacy on mental health to occur, synergistic activism through coalition building needs to transpire between all the entities that affect individuals who have mental illnesses.

The Current Situation in Psychiatry and its Effects on the Delivery of Mental Health Services in the Next Decade

1971 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Horvath
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Behavioral Treatment ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Behavioral Disorder ◽  
Treatment Alternative

As long as mental illness is regarded as primarily a behavioral disorder, current and foreseeable manpower shortages in psychiatry make it necessary to increase the participation of nonmedical personnel in the treatment process. The controversy between those advocating behavioral treatment and those favoring the medical model cannot be resolved due to the fact that our current knowledge of the biologic roots of mental illness is inadequate. A breakthrough in research in this area could resolve the argument and solve the manpower problem by transferring psychiatric disorders into physiologic disease susceptible to medical treatment. Alternative models for the delivery of mental health services can be developed to allow for different possibilities in the outcome of research. Additional data is needed, especially on the costs and effectiveness of future therapies, before an evaluation of programs can be carried out.

scholarly journals Access to public mental health services among older adults with severe mental illness

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd P. Gilmer ◽  
Victoria D. Ojeda ◽  
Dahlia Fuentes ◽  
Viviana Criado ◽  
Piedad Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Severe Mental Illness ◽  
Public Mental Health ◽  
Public Mental Health Services

scholarly journals Concerns about the children of psychiatric in-patients – what the parents say

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 495-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Stormont ◽  
Tom Craig ◽  
Zerrin Atakan ◽  
Peter Loader ◽  
Cindy Williams
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Parental Mental Illness ◽  
Adult Mental Health

There is an increasing body of research literature investigating the effects of parental mental illness on children. This study investigates the views of psychiatric in-patients on consequences of their admission to hospital and their mental illness for their children. The results suggest that the parents do not readily acknowledge that their children have problems, and that interventional approaches require good liaison between adult mental health services and child-focused agencies.

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