N 490 Module 4: Mental Health in the Community Assignment
Module 4 Assignment: Mental Health in the Community
Nurses play a critical role in public health, especially in dealing with different health problems impacting their communities (Castillo et al., 2019). Poor mental health affects one’s ability to lead a fulfilling life and carry on their daily activities in school, at work, and even familial responsibilities and obligations. Poor mental health leads to physical and even social problems with serious effects. The purpose of this paper is to discuss mental health in the community based on information from the Healthy People 2020 initiative or program. The paper selects two objectives on mental health and what one can do as a nurse to help the community, of Riverside, California, in attaining them.
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Part 1: Two Objectives on Mental Health and Nurses’ Role in their Attainment
The increased prevalence of mental health issues that impact individuals’ physical and social wellness makes addressing mental health a core aspect of attaining public health goals. Mental disorders entail health conditions that lead to alterations in one’s mood, thinking, emotions, and behaviors related to distress and impaired functioning or both (Bains & Abdijadid, 2022). Mental disorders lead to various problems that include disability, pain, and even death.
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The Healthy People 2020’s goal on mental health is to enhance services by prevention and ensuring effective access to appropriate and quality mental health care among communities across states.
The program identifies different objectives to help meet its goals. For this essay, the paper focuses on two objectives to enhance mental health in the Riverside, California community. These include objectives the fourth objective and the fifth objective respectively. The fourth objective, MHMD-4, entails reducing the proportion of individuals who experience major depressive episodes (MDEs) (Healthy People.gov, 2022). Under this objective, Healthy People 2020 focuses on the reduction of adolescents who experience major depressive episodes and adults who are over eighteen years and above experiencing major depression. The fifth objective focuses on the expansion of the proportion of primary care facilities that offer mental health treatment onsite or through paid referral. These two objectives are critical because they demonstrate the need to offer preventive and treatment services to tackle the issue of mental health disorders. Healthy People 2020 asserts that close to 8.3% of adolescents experienced major depressive conditions based on the 2008 figures. The program aims at reducing this by ten percent to 7.5 (Bains & Abdijadid, 2022). Again, the organization asserts that 6.5% of adults experience major depressive conditions based on figures from 2008. The organization targets to reduce this by ten percent to 5.8%. The organization also says that only 80% of primary facilities offered mental health treatment either on-site or through paid referrals. The focus of the organization is to increase this to 87% so that more people; adolescents and adults can access mental health care.
The selection of these two objectives is essential because depression is a serious public health problem that continues to impact many individuals in my community in Riverside, California. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserts that close to 8% of American adults aged 20 and above had depression within 14 days with women more likely than men to experience the condition. Depression has serious socioeconomic effects like a reduction in performance and productivity for the affected individual. Studies also show that eight in ten adults with depression had at least some kind of difficulty with work, home, and even social activities due to the condition (Voelker et al., 2021). The implication is that depression is a significant mental health issue that needs prevention and treatment. Access to mental health services is essential and expansion of the primary care facilities that provide care will ensure that more people get interventions to deal with all types of mental disorders. The Riverside community needs these services at the primary care level to prevent increased prevalence, potential comorbidity, and mortality and ensure the overall health and well-being of an individual and families.
Role of Nurse in the Community to Attain these Goals
According to Mental Health America (MHA) (2022), before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, close to 20% of American adults experienced a mental illness, translating to close to 50 million Americans. Further, suicidal ideation continues to rise among adults while a substantial percentage of young people continue to experience depression. Therefore, the situation implores nurses to take a critical role in providing information, and innovative care interventions focused on mental health and improving access to services. As such, the nurse will play a critical role in helping the community to attain these goals by lobbying for increased resource allocation to ensure that a majority if not all primary care facilities have mental health services. Secondly, providing awareness and education is vital to the attainment of these goals as nurses are patient advocates and can work with families to increase the need for seeking mental health services, understanding the symptoms, and getting the right interventions (Ohrnberger et al., 2018). Thirdly, working collaboratively with mental health professionals and psychiatric nurses is essential in ensuring that the community gets effective interventions to deal with the problem.
Part 2
Mental health has a serious impact on one’s physical health and overall well-being. Again, one’s physical status like having a chronic condition and living with a disability can have a serious effect on the state of their mind or mental stability. The Health People 2020 (2022) is categorical that a healthy physical body and effective functioning of one’s body boosts their mental stability. Being in a good mental health situation reduces the risk of having chronic conditions like stroke and heart attacks. Depression is associated with many chronic diseases like diabetes, asthma, and cancer as well as cardiovascular disease and arthritis. Individuals with these conditions are more susceptible or vulnerable to mental health issues associated with the burden of the condition. Therefore, having mental health conditions make it difficult for individuals to deal with chronic conditions.
Mental health aspects or issues impact the onset, development, and effects of any physical health condition. Studies have demonstrated that mental health illnesses affect the longevity of life among individuals. Individuals with mental health challenges like schizophrenia and even depression tend to live shorter lives compared to those without these conditions (Brody et al., 2018). Schizophrenia is linked to a triple risk of dying from respiratory diseases and a double risk of dying from any kind of heart disease. Depression is associated with a close to 50% increase in one’s risk of dying from cancer and an over 65% rise in the risk of dying from heart disease. The implication is that mental health conditions have serious effects on life expectancies as they reduce them by over 20% (Mental Health America, 2022). Studies show that one explanation for the increased prevalence of respiratory disease, heart disease, and risk for cancer is that people with mental health conditions do not seek care for their physical health.
Individuals who participate in mental health services are less likely to have many routine checks on physical health attributes like weight, blood pressure, and even cholesterol levels, which are critical in the identification of health concerns early (Ohrnberger et al., 2018). Further, unhealthy habits like smoking, drug use, and lack of exercise play a critical role in exacerbating mental health issues and limited chance to seek medical care.
The American Psychological Association asserts that exercise or physical activity makes a strong contribution to mental health wellness. Exercises reduce anxiety, improve mood, and enhance overall mental health (Hasin et al., 2018). The implication is that as a nurse, it is important to demonstrate and increase awareness about the effects of physical activities or exercising on mental and even physical health. This illustrates that mental and physical health are intertwined because of the effects each has on the other.
Part 3: Trauma-Informed Care
Nurses deal with patients from diverse backgrounds and care settings. Some of these patients; either minors or adults, may be having past traumas that have significant impacts on their lives, especially their mental health well-being. Therefore, trauma-informed care is an approach in healthcare that assumes that a person is more likely than not to have a history of trauma. Trauma-informed care recognizes the presence of trauma symptoms and acknowledges the significant role that it may have on an individual’s life (Castillo et al., 2018). Trauma-informed care seeks to realize the widespread effects of trauma and understand pathways to recovery, recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma among patients, families, and even healthcare staff, and integrate knowledge about trauma into health policies, practices, and procedures. Further, trauma-informed care ensures that individuals can avoid re-traumatization.
In their study, Fleishman et al. (2019) assert that healthcare providers like nurses need to offer care in a manner that prevents any re-traumatization of patients and even colleagues. When used effectively, trauma-informed care allows nurses and other providers to ensure that healthcare processes, procedures, and settings protect patients and victims of the experience to undergo a similar ordeal. Health care professionals who practice trauma-informed care focus on understanding the problem and its effects and devising effective treatment plans to help recovery.
Nurses are on the frontline in care provision as they interact with patients and their families. As such, as a nurse, it is essential to collaborate with physicians and psychiatric mental health nurses to recognize signs and symptoms of trauma in such a child. As a nurse, I must realize the possible traumatic effects of certain behavior, traumatic effects on illnesses and injuries, and the impact of prior exposure to trauma involving the child. Secondly, recognition of reactions and behaviors that may show pediatric traumatic stress and knowing if they are at an elevated risk for re-traumatization (Dowdell & Speck, 2022). The next is to coordinate diagnosis and subsequent response through actions to mitigate distress, promote emotional support, and address any family immediate needs to ensure the best recovery of the child. Through this process and steps, it will be possible to help the affected child not to experience re-traumatization
Conclusion
Mental health within the community is essential to dealing with conditions like depression. Healthy People 2020 shows that nurses can play an integral role in enhancing the uptake of mental health services in their communities to improve the overall well-being of individuals and reduce the prevalence of mental health conditions. physical health and mental health are related and impact each other. Trauma-informed care allows nurses to improve mental health wellness among affected individuals, including minors.
References
Bains, N. & Abdijadid, S. (2022 June 1). Major Depressive Disorder. StatPearls [Internet].
Brody, D. J., Pratt, L. A. & Hughes, J. P. (2018). Prevalence of Depression Among Adults Aged
20 and Over: the United States, 2013–2016. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db303.htm
Castillo, E. G., Ijadi-Maghsoodi, R., Shadravan, S., Moore, E., Mensah, M. O., Docherty, M., …
& Wells, K. B. (2019). Community interventions to promote mental health and social equity. Current psychiatry reports, 21(5), 1-14. DOI: 10.1007/s11920-019-1017-0
Dowdell, E. B., & Speck, P. M. (2022). CE: Trauma-Informed Care in Nursing Practice. AJN,
American Journal of Nursing, 122(4), 30-38.
DOI: 10.1097/01.NAJ.0000827328.25341.1f
Fleishman, J., Kamsky, H., Sundborg, S., (May 31, 2019) “Trauma-Informed Nursing Practice”
OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 24(2) Manuscript 3.
DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol24No02Man03
Hasin, D. S., Sarvet, A. L., Meyers, J. L., Saha, T. D., Ruan, W. J., Stohl, M., & Grant, B. F.
(2018). Epidemiology of adult DSM-5 major depressive disorder and its specifiers in the United States. JAMA Psychiatry, 75(4), 336-346. DOI:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.4602
Healthy People.gov (2022 June 6). Mental Health and Mental Disorders.
Mental Health America (MHA) (2022). The State of Mental Health in America.
Voelker, J., Kuvadia, H., Cai, Q., Wang, K., Daly, E., Pesa, J., … & Wilkinson, S. T. (2021).
United States national trends in the prevalence of major depressive episodes and co-occurring suicidal ideation and treatment resistance among adults. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 5, 100172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100172
Ohrnberger, J., Fichera, E., & Sutton, M. (2018). The relationship between physical and mental
health: A mediation analysis. Social science & medicine, 195, 42-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.008
Tello, M. (2018). Trauma-informed care: What it is, and why it’s important.
Assignment: Mental Health in the Community
Write a 1000-1500 word essay addressing each of the following points/questions. Be sure to completely answer all the questions for each bullet point. There should be three main sections, one for each bullet below. Separate each section in your paper with a clear heading that allows your professor to know which bullet you are addressing in that section of your paper. Support your ideas with at least three (3) sources using citations in your essay. Make sure to cite using the APA writing style for the essay. The cover page and reference page in correct APA do not count towards the minimum word amount. Review the rubric criteria for this assignment.
Go to the Healthy People 2020 website and search for Mental Health and Mental Disorders. After reading the Overview section, pick and note 2 objectives/goals from the list that you feel affect your community and explain why these were chosen. As a nurse, what can you do to help the community move towards this goal?
Explain how physical health and mental health are correlated. What impact does each have on the other? Give at least one detailed example of how either a specific physical ailment leads to a breakdown in mental health or how a specific mental health disorder can lead to physical issues.
Explain Trauma Informed Care in detail. How you can use Trauma Informed Care to assist a child who has been impacted by trauma?
Participation for MSN
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The ideas and beliefs underpinning the threaded discussions (TDs) guide students through engaging dialogues as they achieve the desired learning outcomes/competencies associated with their course in a manner that empowers them to organize, integrate, apply and critically appraise their knowledge to their selected field of practice. The use of TDs provides students with opportunities to contribute level-appropriate knowledge and experience to the topic in a safe, caring, and fluid environment that models professional and social interaction. The TD’s ebb and flow is based upon the composition of student and faculty interaction in the quest for relevant scholarship. Participation in the TDs generates opportunities for students to actively engage in the written ideas of others by carefully reading, researching, reflecting, and responding to the contributions of their peers and course faculty. TDs foster the development of members into a community of learners as they share ideas and inquiries, consider perspectives that may be different from their own, and integrate knowledge from other disciplines.
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