Mental Health Policy, Administration or Management

Posted: August 13th, 2013

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Mental Health Policy, Administration or Management

Introduction   

Mental health continues to affect a large population in the U.S. There are various reasons why this problem has continued to hugely affect people and efforts to curb it have experiences major obstacles. One cause of the rising problem is the mental health policies. The implementation of some of the policies has led to inequality in access to treatment and other facilities. The administration of policies in the health centers has also resulted in to difficulties in dealing with the issue since some centers experience poor administration that causes low quality services to the affected people. Various challenges in the formulation and implementations of policies have continued to be experienced, and their effects show on the quality of services offered.

Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective

Disparities in mental health administration are been experienced due to inaccessibility of health facilities, cultural factors, delivery systems in the health centers. Provision of mental health differs according to individuals and services require personalization for effectiveness to be realized. The competence and ethics of the health providers are also crucial in the delivery of mental health services. It is necessary to involve the patients in a decision concerning their treatment since this determines their cooperation in the process. This is done through education on the outcomes of their decision. The recovery program is a great advocate for this method of administration (Levin, Lubotsky, Petrila, and Hennessy 2004, 45-47). With a growing competitive society, people have turned to medical methods to improve their abilities.

One of them is the use of psychotropic medication for people with no mental health problems. This is mainly done by physicians to people of low intellectual ability especially from poor backgrounds in pursuit of a better life. This shows a great association of mental health issues and other aspects of life though a great misconception is outstanding. People think that the pills would solve their problems, but on the contrary, adverse side effects associated with the drugs could cause severe mental problems. Improvement of health services requires updated information systems for easy access of data and its management.

Mental Health and Social Policy

Mental health has a great impact on the society in terms of the patients and the people associated with them. The decisions made on dealing with them are therefore very crucial. The law specifies the rights of patients including the mentally ill. The mentally challenged people are not usually in a capacity to make sound judgments regarding their treatment, but the law requires their consent. Been manager, it is therefore important to consider the law and not just the necessity to administer treatment to patients who sometimes require the treatment urgently.

The issue of involuntary hospitalization has various perspectives to it (Mechanic 2008, 21-23). The patients may pose a threat to the society and especially to the families. It becomes a dilemma for physicians to decide on whether to hospitalize the patients forcefully or to let them make the decision. A great relationship between violence and poor mental health has been noted. The mentally ill have poor judgment especially when it comes to expression of emotions. They sometimes result to violence in expression of frustration, anger and other emotions. Sometimes, in their expression of these emotions, they commit crimes that cause imprisonment. Currently, a large number of prisoners have mental disorders.

The mental policies have not addressed this problem adequately. The psychiatric advance directive has provided great assistance to the physicians in administering mental health. This is considered consent for administration of certain methods of treatment made when a person was not in the state of mental illness. When making a psychiatric judgment, the personal biographies and social biographies are used. Social aspects therefore determine the mental state of a person. The character of a person determines the society’s view on the person because one’s mental health determines the behavior of a person towards the environment. There is a necessity in dealing with the chronically ill patients and policies involving professional arrangements for the patients should be adopted, though the identification of patients in need of this kind of care is a challenge.

Online Source: School Shooting By a Mentally Ill Student

This article shows the effects of unattended mental illness. Once again, there is an evident relationship between mental illness and violence. Children are often not considered a threat to society and are not expected to cause much harm to the society either. However, unaddressed psychological problems in children can be fatal when they reach an advanced stage. This shows a need to address mental problems in schools and setting up policies that prevent pressurizing of the children to avoid mental disorders (Bautista 2012, 35-36). The need for special treatment of children with mental health issues is also evident.

Conclusion

Implementation of policies in any department can be challenging, and the field of mental health is no exception. It is important to address the issue from the society’s point of view and from the patients’’ point of view in order to make proper judgments. There are certain barriers in dealing with mental health issues such as the law that should not be ignored in making of any policy. The position of the society when it comes to treatment of mental health patients is controversial. They require a safe environment hence the imprisonment of criminals despite the condition of their mental state and at the same time require fair treatment of the mentally ill (Schmidt 2010, 123-124).