Universal Prevention of Mental Stigmatization Among the Adolescents in Schools Term Paper

Introduction

Mental illness is a condition where the normal thinking, feeling, and relational patterns of a human’s mind are interfered with. As a result of mental disturbance, a mental illness patient’s brain capacity is reduced to an extent that it cannot function normally and treatment becomes necessary. However, since mental illness is a long-term disease too many resources are spent in its treatment and more so the society loses a lot of potentials since the capability of otherwise able adolescent students in the society is greatly reduced. Unlike many other diseases that are common only in some geographical places and in peoples of different gender and age, mental illness is unfortunately universal and it affects all people groups and gender, we find that this stigmatization in schools has led to unequal performance among other factors in schools (Warren, 2005).

Justification of the Issue

Type of project developed to address the issue

The health sector plays an important part in the social-economic welfare of any given nation. Since time immemorial nations have spent a tremendous amount of wealth in studies and research so as to establish the most prevalent and dangerous diseases not only for health reasons but also for economic reasons. However, many governments have downplayed the mental health status of their nations oblivious of not only the increasingly wider population that it is affecting but also the social- economics repercussions it is having on ignorant nations. A problem diagnosed is halfway solved and just like sensitization of HIV/Aids virus infection helped in preventing its spread, and victims’ stigmatization, this paper is intended to sensitize governments and the adolescent students at school on the effects mental illness is having both on the social status of the adolescent students and also the stigma associated with it (Kemshall, 2002).

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Department of Chronic Diseases and Health promotion, depression which is the second disabling mental illness after schizophrenia will be among the three leading illnesses in the world by the year 2030. That being the case, prevention measures must be taken if nations intend to face the next 10 years bravely and with anticipated success. However, mental health prevention suffers a big blow; stigmatization. Whenever a student exhibits symptoms of mental illness, stigma takes precedence instead of treatment. First, the adolescent students are labeled and called all sorts of names which can be very harmful to the student’s emotional health. Once a student has been labeled, (psycho, Zombie, etc), it becomes very hard for them to present themselves for treatment or special attention in the institution. Consequently, division and discrimination begin and the victim and or his family is left to deal with the situation alone (Warren, 2005).

There are reasons that though not factual, make the students feel justified to stigmatize mental health victims. Due to a lack of understanding, people do not consider mental illness as a body malfunction but rather as a self-inflicted problem. Ignorant spiritual and traditional believers believe that mental illness is caused by evil spirits as a punishment either to the victim or his family or clan. Consequently, the school-going victims are left to suffer on their own. In some circumstances, people may tend to think the victim is just trying to be a nuisance and instead of being given medical attention, the stigmatized adolescent students are punished in hope that their irrational behavior will go away with time only to realize that the problem was really beyond the victims. The media has not made things easier for the mentally ill. The media fraternity has been accused of portraying mentally ill people as social outfits. When this is broadcasted or disseminated, society, in general, gets misinformed and as a result, mentally ill people are treated just like on the media. (Dougherty, 2008).

Analysis of the evidence-based research related to interventions or treatments methods chosen

Despite the fact that many schools have some sort of neglected mental health responsibility, most treatments programs are either fully funded or sponsored by the states and or World Health Organization. Since mental illness is mostly a long-term illness, its treatment becomes quite a heavy investment both to the government and also the school-going victims and their families. Evidence-based research however shows that despite the not forthcoming aid for patients, treatments remain the most effective way of dealing with mental illness as compared to other interventions e.g. psychosocial methods

Mental health stigmatization has led to various effects on the youths in school and one of the effects is that of:

• Lack Of Academic And Social Support: this is normally linked with the case of the adolescent student’s resistance whereby research finds that most adolescent students claim to be disruptive because they do not receive adequate support in doing their school assignments or in developing skills in their self-management which leads to a low academic competence whereby most adolescent students are held back leading to lower achievement. Mental health stigmatization in schools has a diversified effect on these students which normally differ with the presence of many factors including those of self attitudes and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds these factors target the performance of the students whereby a negative impact is brought that is when a school administration fails to address the needs of its students this may be done when the school administers in formulating its curricula that include the exclusion of the mentally ill adolescent students which proves to lack relevance to the adolescent students thus making the adolescent students lose interest whereby they fail to attend school and some of them dropping out of schools due to the boredom caused by the school curricula this course may also lead to a low literacy rate among the members of the society.
• Acceptance of mental health stigmatization: through this, the adolescent students are forced to learn that stigmatization is part of their ways of life in the community meaning they accept is a norm making the children grow up in a manner of separating themselves from others thus having a negative effect on the child’s integration with others in the community.
• Psychological Insinuation mental health stigmatization is said to be having psychological implications on various adolescent students in many societies since the children are forced to participate in particular activities at school which needs them to alter their social status through this the adolescent students face a variety of conflicts giving rise to a psychological and identity problem.
• Alienation normally occurs in school adolescent students due to the assimilation policies that are imposed in schools which are normally meant to break the conversion of social factors from those who are affected by mental health disabilities disabled and those not affected this leads to the alienating of the affected children from their society older to younger stimulating the identity crisis within their societies. This alienation can lead to social isolation that might also lead to depression through stress anger and fatigue which normally happen to detract the student from performing in schools.

Medication

Although treatments have side effects, they have proved to be effective.

Studies have shown that in cases of severe mental illness, medication is inevitable and should be considered in any psychosocial treatment. However, studies have shown also that a combination of both medicine and interventional treatment is definitely more efficient. Depending on the type of mental illness that a patient has, interventional treatments tend to give better results as compared to medicine. In cases where psychosocial treatment is effective, there is no need for medication which is both more expensive and has side effects (Shulman, 2006).

Evidence-based methods

• Random clinical trials: trial of alternative methods to treat one illness.
• Multiple testing of results helped in validating both efficacy and efficiency of the results.
• Consistent findings: Same results helped in building confidence.
• Multiple analysis; combined results to tackle one related problem.
• Though intervention programs are as important, medication is the best for severe complications e.g. borderline and Schizophrenia.

Interventions

There are mostly deinstitutionalized efforts that are meant to help the patient once out of the hospital. Interventions are basically community-based responsibilities. Educating members of the community particularly family members have shown a great deal of improvement. Clinical trials have shown relapse rates for patients with combined treatment and intervention programs have shown lower compared to those who receive either medication or psycho-education alone. (Sartorius, 2008).

In some severe cases like schizophrenia controlled studies have shown a tremendous reduction of severe symptoms in people who do not respond to medication. In the late 1970s, an experiment was done in Wisconsin that showed that a program known as Assertive Community Treatment was essential since patients still needed care after being released from the hospital. For the working class, patients are engaged in money-making activities of their choice. This way the patients continue to perfect their area of training that enables them maintains their employment.

Evidence-based methods

Assertive community education improved home care for the discharged patients and thus improved general results.

General community education helps reduce stigma thereby increasing sourcing of treatment and victims’ acceptance. In dealing with Stigma patients are advised to do practice the following:

• Feel free to choose who to share their problems and challenges with.
• Participate in stigma awareness groups that sensitize the public of harmful jokes, remarks, and stereotypes that affect victim’s emotional health.
• Do not shy aware from getting treatment.
• Relate with fellow patients and discuss and share their challenges
• Avoid isolation since this has secondary effects on the patient’s mental health.
• Understand that patient’s condition is medical and that they should not blame themselves for it but rather come outbrave and face it with treatment and psycho-social intervention.
• Be bold enough to let family and the community know what is expected of them. Keeping quiet will result in people misunderstanding the sick adolescent students consequently treating them badly out of ignorance.

Organizations offering supportive employment by allowing patients to do what they are good at and also providing a conducive working environment.

Identification of the type of mental illness and offering specific social and counseling services.

Description of the target population, stakeholders, and participants

As we have seen earlier in this paper, mental illness does not choose people group, gender, or geographical environment. However, there are different implications for different age groups. Adult mental illness patients are mostly affected by severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and dementia. This in turn affects their productivity causing social-economic consequences.

Primary Dependants: Children and school-going youths depend on adults for both moral and financial support.

General dependants: The government, investors, and community, in general, depend on adults for social-economic support.

• The government undertakes tremendous health costs and also substitution support for primary dependants in case of an adult’s sickness e.g. providing school fees and medical care for patient’s children.
• Employers suffer loss when services provided by their now sick workers are curtailed. Employers undertake the responsibility to pay for their employees’ medical care and moral support e.g. through supportive employment.
• The community takes the responsibility of taking care of primary dependants while their parents/ guardians are undergoing treatment.

A description of the data collection and analysis methods that will be used for the needs of the assessment.

The goal of this paper is mainly to address the stigma associated with mental health stigma issues in schools in an effort to help the youths achieve larger social awareness, advance the work related to prevention of mental health disorders, facilitate early intervention, and create an empathic attitude for issues related to mental health?

Data collection

The researcher will utilize the following methods of data collection in order to fully collect sufficient and accurate information:

• Physical visits to patients’ homes. (This would be mainly for the researcher’s observation purposes and also as an opportunity to present a questionnaire)
• Interviews of the related adolescent students (family members, adolescent students, doctors, employers, etc)
• Sought to access medical facility’s records and documentation
• Use of Archives of existing documented researches
• Questionnaires

Below is a draft of a useful questionnaire to be presented to victims of stigmatization:

Name of student :______________________________

Gender:_____________________________________

Age:_______________________________________

School:_____________________________________

State:_______________________________________

Email Address:_________________________________

____________________________________________

Phone Number:_________________________________

I: What type of mental illness do you suffer from?

(a) Schizophrenia ( )

(b) Bipolar ( )

(c) Depression ( )

II: Do you feel stigmatized?

(a) Yes ( )

(b) No ( )

(If yes please answer the following questions to the best of your ability)

III: Where do you feel more stigmatized most?

(a) Work place ( )

(b), Social gatherings ( )

(C) Home ( )

(d) Bank ( )

(e) Hospitals ( )

(f) Church ( )

IV: Who makes you feel most stigmatized?

(a) Family member ( )

(b) Fellow employees ( )

(c) Employers ( )

V: What do you think family and members of the community (work place) should do to make you feel at ease around them? _______________________________________________________________________________

VI: Which form of media has the highest form of stigmatization?

(a) Visual, (live TV, recorded forms e.g. movie DVDs ( )

(b), audio, written (magazines, Newspapers, journals ( )

VII: What action would you like to be taken against any media that propagates stigmatization? ________________________________________________________________

IX: Do you think your government or employer is doing enough to help reduce stigma?

(a) Yes ( )

(b) No

If no, please state what you think they should do to improve the situation

__________________________________________________________________

X: What form of treatment do you think is most helpful to you?

(a) Medication ( )

(b) Psychosocial intervention ( )

Please give reasons to your answer above

___________________________________________________________________

Data Analysis

Once data is received it needs to be analyzed so that accurate actions can be taken in problem-solving. Data acquired from the respondents who are adolescent students will be analyzed using various techniques. The researcher is expected to tabulate the results and particularly use percentages to analyze the data before making explanations or deductions. However, in some other instances, the researcher will be required to categorically use charts and more specifically pie charts in order to clearly show the results and findings to be obtained from the research study. In essence, data collected will be analyzed in the following manner:

• Appropriate data entry will be done in formats like tables, charts, and graphs for the proper tabulation of qualitative analysis.
• Statistical Analysis this will be done through statistical tools and software adaptable to the data collected.
• Descriptive method this will be done by assessing and evaluating the questionnaires and other sources of information.
• -Communicate your results otherwise your efforts will be futile.

An explanation of the project goals and how to assess them.

The goal of this paper is mainly to address the stigma associated with mental health issues in an effort to help adolescent students achieve larger social awareness, advance the work related to prevention of mental health disorders, facilitate early intervention, and create an empathic attitude for issues related to mental health Stigma is basically associating someone with something negative due to his status quo in school. It could be medical, social, economic, and or physical status in society. There are many forms of stigma; stereotyping, labeling, group creation, discrimination, etc. Stigma will be assessed by the data amylases especially of the questionnaire; whether they feel stigmatized, who they feel stigmatizes them most, where it mostly occurs, how they feel when the media portrays them badly, and basically how they feel when the community as a whole treats them. Depending on the geographical data analysis then it will be possible to know which parts are mostly affected and the most prevalent form of stigmatization. (Sartorius, 2008)

This paper also seeks to achieve mental health social awareness in schools since research has shown that though medical treatment is the best in severe mental illness cases, psychosocial intervention plays a great role in improving a patient’s mental health. Social awareness is a deliberate effort of educating adolescent students in general about the causes, symptoms, and effects of mental illnesses. Social awareness of a community can be assessed by noticeable reduction of stigma effects, the improved mental health of discharged patients, the better portrayal of mentally ill patients by the media, and basically the general acceptance of mentally ill adolescent students. Social awareness will also be measured by the increased rate of prevention and early intervention since the community will not ignore early mental illness symptoms or discriminate against them. (Moynihan, 2003)

Governments are responsible for advancing work related to the prevention of mental health disorders and facilitate early interventions in schools. This will be assessed by first favorable government policies that will facilitate adequate funding and sponsoring for mental health facilities. Once this has been accomplished, there will be an increase of mental health facilities inducing schools and other social amenities as may be required.

An Action plan, including tasks to be implemented

The best action plans to be fully implemented should include the following:

• Advocate for favorable mental health policies
• Present evidence-based research to the responsible ministry of health for better utilization of mental health results.
• Use research results to sensitize the government on the future repercussions it continues to ignore the nation’s mental health.
• Advocate for more funds to be allocated to mental health facilities and social amenities like special schools

Promote social awareness:

• Community education- Organize free or affordable seminars that will provide a forum for more enlightenment about symptoms, causes, and effects of stigma.
• Give the community members psychosocial training that will enable them to take care of the discharged mentally ill adolescent students.
• Protest against bad mass media; mobilize the public to refuse to support media forms that badly portray mentally ill adolescent students

An analysis of possible challenges to implementation and how to address them:

• Continued assumption by the government on matters relating to mental health: This can be addressed through lobbying for the government’s attention. Research-based evidence should be followed up regularly to ensure that researchers efforts and government’s funds do not go to waste
• Lack of public interest: Due to the wrong publicity that mental health has had over a long time, community-based education might not be very successful at first to many adolescent students. However, this can be dealt with by taking the information to the public as opposed to waiting for people to come for it. Mental health can be introduced in various curriculums from the very low stages of education to the advanced form of education.
• Funding governments should ensure there is sufficient school funding for the much research that is needed in order to maintain mental health.

A description of how the project will influence social change

This program is meant to help influence social change in many ways this will include first and foremost reduce stigma. Out of understanding, the adolescent students will now accept the adolescent students who are mentally ill more and this will not only build their self-confidence but will in the long run enhance prevention since many mentally ill adolescent students and their families will not shy away from seeking early medical attention. Again social awareness will through psychosocial education help mentally ill adolescent students who have already sought medication and are now recuperating from home. Media which is also an important aspect of society will start to portray a better picture of the mentally ill adolescent students and this will go a long way in changing the student’s opinion of the mentally sick in general.

Literature Review

Mental Stigmatization can be said to be a widespread psychological occurrence characterized by individuals affected with low moods, lack of interest when accomplishing routine responsibilities, and declined capability to experience happiness. In essence, stigmatization is an impermanent declined mood by adolescent students when they are disgraced or disturbed. Stigmatization develops into clinical stigmatization which is a severe disorder and patients affected normally exhibit symptoms like bad moods and deep thoughts that are difficult to avoid (Gask and Usherwood 1997).

Stigmatization has a lot of outcomes or effects such as causing marvelous emotional pains, decline of work efficiency, upsetting the lives of many adolescent students particularly those affected and they’re next of kin, unfavorably influence the lives of acquaintances and relatives and in the long-term, it causes negative consequences to the economic growth or expansion. Mental stigmatization alters a student’s way of thinking, feelings, distressing community conduct, and tampers with the bodily well-being of the person. Such feelings like sadness, being exhausted, or being in a mood of despair may adversely affect employment issues, schooling, and family duties and may lead to one being attacked by depression (Sartorius, 2008).

In most cases, lack of motivation leads to, absenteeism, poor performance, lack of involvement in activities, and dropout cases in schools. Most adolescent students who face mental health stigmatization are said to be undergoing various challenges while at school, these problems may include: fear of failure, lack of academic success, social pressures, lack of confidence in themselves, misplacement of papers and books, frequent absenteeism, lack of motivation and quietness at school as a result of mental health stigmatization. (Gask and Usherwood 1997).

Since stigmatization can attack anyone its treatment is said to be successful in most cases but it has been reported that it is difficult to identify the indications of stigmatization which in the process has made treatment of this stigmatization to be ineffective because of late identification. There have been many reasons as to why stigmatization treatment has not been successful over the last few years and such reasons include; indications of the affected person not clearly being known which is considered the first step in treating stigmatization disorders. The other reason is that of the view that stigmatized people are usually feeble which may not be true thus the inability of treating the disorder with its corrective measures because the assumption may not hold (Shulman, 2006).

This paper will therefore recommend teachers focus on the adolescent students’ problems culturally, linguistically, and socially and at the same time, they should encourage the adolescent students to choose subjects that are of interest to them.

These adolescent students should also be allowed to choose a unit of their study whereby, the teacher can relate the student’s preferences of the subjects by asking them questions on the subjects they like and those they dislike not basing on racial factors. The first step that a teacher is recommended to take is to know what the adolescent students like or dislike about the school activities and what they would recommend the school to do to enable them to have an environment that makes them learn better. The teacher is encouraged to be caring and be able to give attention and assistance to each and every student in his class this is said to be normally the major factor leading to improvement in the achievement of the adolescent students’ school goals. (Shulman, 2006).

Schools as a whole are advised to establish a learning format that can enable them to set goals for each student, this format can enable each student to get rewards for his great efforts and achievements this makes the adolescent students be motivated whereby learning in a school is made to be a competition with few rewards available to the best performing adolescent students through which recognition of an individuals excellence is one way of motivating the other student to work harder so that he or she may also be rewarded accordingly. On the other hand, the adolescent student’s parents are encouraged to talk to their children openly so as to find out how mental health stigmatization affect their school performance, they should also be encouraged to spend most of their time at the school where their children attend so that they can be able to know what activities are carried out in the school concerning mental health stigmatization.

References

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