Understanding Mental Health: Impact of Stigma

Introduction

• Terms like depression, anxiety, psychosis, dementia, addiction, crisis, and stress are used in many ways.
• How well-being is affected for people experiencing mental health difficulties must be considered.
• It is important to understand and work knowledgeably in the changing area of nursing.
• Individuals with mental illnesses, along with their families and caregivers, undergo physical symptoms stemming from the illness itself, treatment consequences, social determinants, and stigma/discrimination.
• An understanding of mental health theories is important for psychiatric mental health nursing practice for treatment, support and empowerment.

Mental Health

• A person cannot be considered healthy without mental and physical health.
• Mental health involves realizing potential, coping with normal stresses, working productively, and contributing to the community.
• Positive mental health improves quality of life and general well-being.
• Good mental health results in better physical condition, educational success, improved economic circumstances and richer relationships.
• Mental health extends beyond just the absence of disorders or disabilities.
• Mental health means the ability to feel, think, and act in ways that enhance enjoyment of life and face challenges with emotional and spiritual well-being, respect for culture, equity, social justice, interconnections, and personal dignity.

Mental Illness

• Historically, mental illness described behaviours considered "strange" or "different," occurring infrequently and deviating from established norms.
• Mental illness features changes in cognition, mood, or behaviour linked to distress and impaired functioning.
• Mental illness covers all mental disorders that can be specifically diagnosed.
• Cognition, mood, or behavior can be impaired like in Alzheimer's, major depression, or schizophrenia, respectively.

The Epp Report (1988) and the Mental Health Continuum

• Mental health exists along a continuum.
• An individual's mental health is a relative state, not an absolute one.
• No one is at the peak of health at all times.
• Individuals can fall anywhere from minimally to maximally healthy mentally.
• All people have potential for increased mental health as they develop over thier lives.
• The Mental Disorder Continuum has endpoints of maximal mental disorder on one end and the absence of mental disorder on the other, allowing for a varying degrees of distress and impairment.

Contributing Factors

• Multiple elements can influence the manifestation and progression of mental illness, as well as the mental well-being of an individual without a mental illness.
• The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) classifies approximately 350 mental disorders; symptoms and causes of a number of them are influenced through cultural and ethnic factors

Resilience

• Resilience in mental health is essential to recovery.
• Resilience involves complex cultural systems not just individual capacity to overcome adversity.
• Resilience depends on accessing resources that support well-being and their negotiation.
• Resilience is closely tied the the process of adapting, and helps with facing tragedies, loss, trauma, and severe stress.
• Resilience helps people recover from painful events and experiences.
• Optimism, mastery, and competence characterize resilience.
• Early life experiences aid in mastering difficult or stressful events enhancing the prefrontal cortex's later ability to cope.

Stigma

• Mental illness does not equate to a character flaw; multiple reasons exist for its development.
• Mental illness may result from genetics, trauma, or violence and injustice.
• Sometimes, the exact origin of the conditions is not known.
• Mental illnesses, same as cancer or arthritis are health concerns.
• Stigma is made up of negative and unfavorable attitudes and behaviours.
• Prejudice that spreads fear, misinformation, labels others, and perpetuates stereotypes, is called stigma.
• Stigma against people with mental illnesses is oppressive and alienating
• Stigma can limit individuals from accessing support and care.
• Stigma worsens the individual's negative experience with the illness.
• Isolation can be caused by the stigma related to mental health
• Poverty, hopelessness and suicide are consequences of stigma.
• More than 60% of people with mental health problems won’t seek the help they need as stigma is one of the main reasons.

Reducing Stigma

• Learn the facts about mental health.
• Be aware of negative attitudes and behaviours.
• Choose words with care because the way to speaking about mental health can affect attitudes of others.
• Share facts to help build a positive attitude and challenge myths.
• Focus on the positive; mental illness is one part of a person's picture.
• Treat everyone with dignity and respect; offer support and encouragement
• Include everyone; denying services due to health issues is against the law.
• Bell Let's Talk started in September 2010 new conversations about mental health in Canada
• Millions of people offered new ideas and hope for those who struggle.
• Around $93,423,628.80 in donations have been made to mental health programs through Bell Let's Talk.

Culture and Mental Health

• Canadian psychiatric mental health nursing considers Indigenous and multicultural contexts.
• Cultural safety, including relational inquiry, cultural competency, and trauma-informed practice, is a goal.
• Culture includes shared beliefs, values, and practices within group.
• Culture can be seen as a guide that impacts overall well-being.
• Culture norms show how group members understand the world and make decisions.
• Cultural norms decide what are normal and abnormal behaviors.
• In Western societies, hearing voices and seeing visions are seen as signs of pathology.
• Vision quests are honored in Indigenous cultures.
• Ethnicity includes similar traits, customs, and race.
• Ethnic groups share heritage, history, and world views.
• Cultural safety covers power within health care in light of Indigenous backgrounds of colonisation.
• Colonization encompasses invasion, dispossession, and subjugation.
• Awareness of cultural safety also means assessing privileges in health care.
• The history of colonization, abuses, discrimination, and structural obstacles make cultural safety central in psychiatric mental health practice.
• Trauma-informed practice recognizes past trauma on current mental health and well being.
• Trauma-informed practice builds relationships, engagement, choice, awareness and skills at a systems level.
• Trauma affects immigrants, refugees, people with disabilities, women, men, children, youth, and Aboriginal peoples differently.

Medicine Wheel

• The medicine wheel serves as an symbol.
• The wheel represents the four directions, the four grandfathers, and human nature.
• The medicine wheel holistically represents health and illness and links personal connections to nature.
• The four compass points are a journey in life.

The Importance of Culture

• Nursing care promotes verbalization of feelings.
• Nursing promotes the individual with focused teaching skills.
• Nursing assists in controlling behavioural and emotional aspects.
• Psychiatric nurses come from varying cultures.
• Nurses will encounter and engage with people with differing world views.
• Cultural competence in the practice leads to influence nursing assessments, interventions and being open to diversity,
• Failing to consider culture of the patient and family leads to an inability to establish trusting, meaningful communications.

Explore the complexities of mental health, focusing on the impact of stigma. Learn about the crucial skills for nurses in mental health and the importance of clear understanding of terms like psychosis and addiction. Examine how stigma affects individuals with mental illness.