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Crisis Intervention
Week Seven
Understanding Mental Health / Illness
Quote taken from Awakening, July, 1992.
"Felt from the inside, schizophrenia is terrifying. Sometimes people are taking away parts of my body and putting them back. Sometimes I think they are going to kill me."
"I was hounded with inner demons. It was like a frightening spirit - a golden beam of light, that I believed had previously haunted an executed murderer."
"I would have liked to have gone to our senior prom, but fate did not give us that chance."
Mental Health / Mental Illness
The assignments for the next two weeks will continue a focus on developing background material and intervention techniques for crisis situations including mental illnesses, addictions, suicide, battering and domestic violence. We will be working through scenarios and evaluating effectiveness during the face-to-face class.
I am writing very little lecture type material this week about mental illnesses because there are excellent web sites that have accurate, up-to-date material available. During the class sessions, I will be showing the movie, Back From Madness, which depicts the lives of four persons with mental illnesses. This movie highlights the effect of mental illness on people's lives and discusses some of the treatment options for them.
Before one explores the complexity of mental illness, one should establish a base of what is mental health. The following excerpt gives one basis for this comparison from the authors of Bailey / Bailey.
Mental Health Behaviors
With the idea that most behaviors have an appropriate range that is both acceptable and expected, let us look at some of the specific things that may be used to judge one's overall mental health. In the final analysis placing a certain behavior in the appropriate range is based on what society is willing to accept.
- Thinking well of oneself; being fairly free of feelings of inadequacy and inferiority: being able to express or to communicate one's emotions.
- The ability to trust oneself to make decisions and to act on those decisions after careful consideration of the consequences of one's actions.
- A genuine feeling of well-being and a realistic degree of optimism (expectation that things will turn out well).
- Accepting one's real limitations while developing one's assets.
- Evaluating one's mistakes, determining their causes, and learning to not repeat the same behavior.
- Being able to delay immediate gratification for future satisfaction (for example, putting off getting married until one's career preparation is finished).
- The ability to form close and lasting relationships with persons of both sexes, being relatively satisfied with one's own sex, and having the ability to enjoy an active and satisfactory sex life.
- An appropriate conscience that prevents the individual from getting into trouble by resisting behavior that is destructive either to the individual or to others; a conscience that also produces guilt when one behaves in an antisocial fashion.
- The ability to accept authority (obey traffic laws, follow the rules of the organization for which one works, etal) in appropriate situations, but not to be afraid of authority and to contest authority if necessary.
- The ability to meet one's needs in a socially acceptable manner while taking into consideration the needs of others.
- The absence of petty jealousies and the need to exploit and manipulate others.
- An ability to maintain a reasonably accurate perception of reality and of one's social and interpersonal interaction.
- The ability to work alone and to work effectively with others; compromising and sharing when appropriate, but being able to compete and be aggressive when necessary; being organized and systematic in order to get things done; possessing an acceptable amount of cleanliness, promptness, orderliness, and neatness.
- The ability to function in both dependent and independent roles; to follow or to lead, to take care of others or to be taken care of, depending on the circumstances.
- Acceptance of the fact that stress and change are part of everyday life; being flexible enough to adapt to these continual changes without a great deal of psychologic discomfort.
- A sense of humor; the ability to laugh at oneself and others when life situations are absurd.
- The ability to maintain a balanced or integrated personality so that one can respond adaptively to life experiences.
Adapted from: Bailey, D.S. & Bailey, D.R. (1993) Therapeutic Approaches to Care of the Mentally Ill. 3rd Ed. Philadelphia: F.D. Davis.
Activities for Week Seven
- Reading:
- Chapters 9, 11 and 12 from the text
Quote: From A Survivor's Story:
"My advise to any one that loses someone to anything is don't NOT think about it. Don't pretend that it never happened. Never forget that it ever happened. Never forget about the person Ð don't block it out of your mind. Do remember about the person." When asked, "What is a survivor? One answered, one who is living through their life when it has been changed forever by someone else."
- Participation:
- Answer the following questions about suicide risk and post on the Web Board in Week 7 Activity 1 (Wk 7 Act#1)
- Is it appropriate to ask a person if they are considering suicide? When would you use this criteria?
- What are some of the risk factors to suspect a person is considering suicide? Consider this when listening to a neighbor or friend, not necessarily as part of a work environment.
- This activity is to help me design this week's class to better meet your needs.
List some of the things that you already know about mental illness. Then list some questions you have (things that you want to know) about mental illness. Post this on the Web Board in Week 7 Activity 2 (Wk 7 Act#2)
- Worksheets:
- This assignment is to increase your knowledge about various types of mental illness. The due date for this will be in class December 1st at 9 AM.
You can find the information that you need at the Web Sites listed or in other valid texts. The objective of this assignment is for each of you to develop a working knowledge base for each of these illnesses.
Web sites: www.nmha.org/reassurance/anniversary/index.cfm
www.nmha.org/
www.nimh.nih.gov/
www.helping.apa.org -search (The Road to Resilience)
Please write up answers to the following questions for each of the illnesses listed below:
The questions are:
a) What are some of the characteristics of this illness?
b) Indicate the probable causes of this illness.
c) After researching a & b, what have you learned that might help to respond effectively with a person who has this illness?
- Schizophrenia,
- Depression,
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
- Bipolar Disorder,
- Anxiety Disorder,
- Borderline Personality Disorder,
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
- Eating Disorders and
- Learning Disabilities
Remember:
Face-to-Face Class will be December 1, 2006 in room 8 - 102 from 9AM-1 PM.
It is very important for each of you to have done the reading and assignments before this class so that we can focus on actual responding and evaluating what responses might work best.
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