Mental Health Guide: For students, teachers, school psychologists, nurses, social workers, counselors and parents.

By Haitham Al Fiqi

• Most people think that mental health only applies to those people who have diagnosable mental disorders. The truth is ALL of us should be concerned about our mental health. It is our basis of being healthy. It is the holistic approach to health. In fact, many people adhere to the belief that mental health is the core of healthiness. Health starts and ends with mental health. It encompasses everything and it is everybody's business.

 

• For virtually all people, mental health is often neglected until something apparently becomes wrong. Until then, we will have to wait for signs that it is vital to our existence, to our well being, to our relationships with other people, to our perceptions, to our fulfillment and even to our own happiness.

 

• Even though we have achieved great medical advancements, there still seems to be lacks in our general knowledge on mental health. We have developed quick fixes to our physical ailments but we are left far behind with our solutions to mental illnesses. If we have anything, there still remain some loopholes and what we know is inconclusive. We haven’t developed universal treatments for psychological disorders and even assessments and diagnosis of such ailments are flawed.

 

• In the past, the general concept for being healthy is the "absence of disease". If so, then someone who doesn’t have diagnosable heart attack but experience irrational fear on something like chicken or heights is a healthy person. In fact, no.

 

• While blood pressure, cholesterol level, and body temperature are easy to asses these are still seen as singular components of our health. Disruptions in these mechanisms mean that a person could be physically ill. However, the health of a person is not only associated to how well his body functions but also to how well are his psychological, emotional and social dispositions. Manifestations of mental illness are much harder to asses since most symptoms occur discreetly during the developmental stages of the disorders and internal states are dependent on the subjective nature of the disorder. For example, someone who usually feels "blue" may or may not be diagnosed with depression.

 

• We also have to take into account the social aspect of mental health. People who have sickness have more obvious manifestations that they are ill, therefore the society and immediate environment could easily identify whether or not a person is sick. For mental health, however, ignorance could lead to wrong perceptions. For example, a teenager who became drug-dependent and later committed suicide is viewed as irresponsible and desperate when in fact he may be suffering from a psychological disorder.

 

• A simplistic definition to mental health could be "successful mental functioning". But what are the parameters of this definition? What could possibly tell us that someone is struggling through mental illness?

 

1. a) Someone who is distressed for a prolonged period without apparent, logical reason.
2. b) Someone who has disruptions in thinking
3. c) Someone who has altered behaviors and moods
4. d) Someone who relies on substances such as drugs, alcohol and cigarettes may have issues on their mental health
5. e) Someone who has impaired social functions

 

• These are just representations of how a person with mental health may behave. However, these are not conclusive bases.

 

• As we may yet to understand, mental health is directly correlated with physical ailment or health. Both may be one and the same but are very different in nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Nov 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755460831

Book preview

Mental Health Guide : For students, teachers, school psychologists, nurses, social workers, counselors and parents.

Mental Health Guide

For students, teachers, school psychologists, nurses, social workers, counselors and parents.

By. Haitham Al Fiqi

All rights reserved@Haitham Al Fiqi

Note

This eBook is a guide and serves as an initial guide. , it is advisable to additionally seek professional advice or to consult a doctor / psychologist.

This e-book is a guide and serves as a primer. Please also seek professional advice.

A bout the eBook

Police and other members of the criminal justice system such as criminal lawyers have become the front-line responders to the growing mental health crisis. This is especially true for low-income communities.

About 44% of people in prisons and 37% of inmates in state or federal prisons have been diagnosed with a mental illness, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), compared with about 20% of the general population.

Nearly 25% of police shootings involve an encounter with someone with a mental illness, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

Suicide remains the leading cause of death in prisons and occurs at much higher rates in prisons than in the general population.

The rate of mental illness among criminal defendants has risen along with the significant rise in the incarceration rate in the United States. Between 1972 and 2009, the US prison population increased by 700%.

Since untreated mental illness is more common among people of low socioeconomic status, they are also more likely to be accused of committing violent acts, whether the crime is related to their mental illness or not.

The first option for most courts when a criminal case involves a defendant with a serious mental illness is to refer the person to a residential psychiatric care where he or she can undergo treatment with the goal of regaining his or her competency. However, placement in these facilities may not be possible, especially in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced the space available for use by prisoners and inmates in need of mental health care.

Inmates ordered by courts to be admitted to regain competency may have to wait weeks or months to receive treatment.

The longer treatment is delayed, the worse the symptoms become and the longer the prognosis. Open living arrangements in most long-term psychiatric care facilities have been limited due to contact restrictions implemented to deter the spread of corona virus. This has reduced the availability of much-needed mental health care to populations in desperate need of professional help.

From this standpoint, the author, a criminal lawyer, wanted to discuss mental health problems in general because they serve society to reduce criminal crimes. He wrote this book through criminal scientific research on this important topic for justice institutions and penal institutions in general.

CONTENTS

Addiction and Personality Disorder

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder

Agoraphobia

Alternative Methods in Mental Health Care

Alternative Therapies-Part 2

Aspergers Syndrome

Bipolar Depression Versus Clinical Depression

Bipolar II Disorder

Choosing a Therapist Step-By-Step

Combined-Type ADHD

Conduct Disorder

Creativity and Bipolar Disorder

Culturally Based Healing Arts

Do I Need Mental Health Help?

Dual Diagnosis

Dying to Be Thin

Dysthymic Depression

Early Sign of Autism

Expressive Therapies in Mental Health

Herbs That Help With Anxiety

Histrionic Personality Disorder

Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder

Loving Someone With OCD

Men and Depression

No Need to Hide

Panic Attacks

Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder

Rapid Cycling in Bipolar Disorder

Remembering the Terror

Schizophrenia

Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD

Seroquel

Sleep and Mood

Symptoms of Post-traumatic stress disorder

Taking Control of Mental Illness

The Most Common Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviors

The Psychopathic Personality

The Types of Depression

Two Herbs that Help with mental distress

Types of Self-Injury

What is a Mood Disorder?

What is Social Anxiety Disorder?

What is Social Anxiety

What is Trichotillomania?

When Anxiety Becomes a Personality Disorder

When Fear Paralyzes

When the Cure Harms

Zoloft

An Overview of the Mental Health Assessment

Alternative Mental Health Care Solutions

Overview of Mental Health Counseling

Mental Health Courts: Separate Justice System

Causes of Mental Health Disorders

The Budding Disorders: Mental Health of Children

Mental Health Nursing: The Roles of Psychiatric Nurses

Perspectives on Mental Health Recovery

Mental Health Statistics: How Common Mental Disorders Are

Benefits of Mental Health Support Groups

Mental Health Tests as Important Assessment Tools

What Effects Does Nutrition Have On Mental Health

3 Major Focuses of Recovery for Optimized Mental Health

Understanding Single Parent Psychology and Mental Health

Tips on Taking Care of Mental Health

Tips on Online Researching for Mental Health Articles

Addiction and Personality Disorder

Substance abuse and dependence (alcoholism, drug addiction) is only one form of recurrent and self-defeating pattern of misconduct. People are addicted to all kinds of things: gambling, shopping, the Internet, reckless and life-endangering pursuits. Adrenaline junkies abound.

The connection between chronic anxiety, pathological narcissism, depression, obsessive-compulsive traits and alcoholism and drug abuse is well established and common in clinical practice. But not all narcissists, compulsives, depressives, and anxious people turn to the bottle or the needle.

Frequent claims of finding a gene complex responsible for alcoholism have been consistently cast in doubt. In 1993, Berman and Noble suggested that addictive and reckless behaviors are mere emergent phenomena and may be linked to other, more fundamental traits, such as novelty seeking or risk taking. Psychopaths (patients with Antisocial Personality Disorder) have both qualities in ample quantities. We would expect them, therefore, to heavily abuse alcohol and drugs. Indeed, as Lewis and Bucholz convincingly demonstrated in 1991, they do. Still, only a negligible minority of alcoholics and drug addicts are psychopaths.

What has been determined is that most addicts are narcisstic in personality. Addictions serve his purpose. They place him above the laws and pressures of the mundane and away from the humiliating and sobering demands of reality. They render him the center of attention - but also place him in splendid isolation from the maddening and inferior crowd.

Such compulsory and wild pursuits provide a psychological exoskeleton. They are a substitute to quotidian existence. They afford the narcissist with an agenda, with timetables, goals, and faux achievements. The narcissist - the adrenaline junkie - feels that he is in control, alert, excited, and vital. He does not regard his condition as dependence. The narcissist firmly believes that he is in charge of his addiction that he can quit at will and on short notice.

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder

Adult attention deficit disorder, or adult ADD, can be a very frustrating condition to have. Almost all of the initial research and focus for the attention deficit disorders was focused on children and adolescents, but adults are just as likely to have the condition as youths. The disorder normally makes itself apparent during childhood, with difficulties at school being one of the most common hallmarks of the condition, which helps to explain why so much focus has been on children with the disease. But children with attention deficit disorder grow up to be adults with attention deficit disorder.

If you are an adult and you are having trouble focusing at work, difficulty listening to people in everyday conversations, find yourself interrupting people a lot, losing things frequently, are easily distracted from tasks, are easily frustrated or find yourself feeling over stimulated often, you may have adult attention deficit disorder.

Treatment for the disorder mirrors the treatments used for children with the condition. The first step you need to take if you suspect you may have an adult attention deficit condition is to see a doctor. There are other disorders that can mimic an adult attention deficit condition, such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, or bipolar disorder, and it is