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Chapter 6 Mental Health Care for Hispanic Americans

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Introduction

The Spanish language and culture are common bonds for many Hispanic Americans, regardless of whether they trace their ancestry to Africa, Asia, Europe, or the Americas. The immigrant experience is another common bond. Nevertheless, Hispanic Americans are very heterogeneous in the circumstances of their migration and in other characteristics. To understand their mental health needs, it is important to examine both the shared and unique experiences of different groups of Hispanic Americans.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the Hispanic-American population is its rapid growth. In the 2000 census, sooner than forecast, the number of Hispanics counted rose to 35.3 million, roughly equal to the number of African Americans (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001a). In fact, census projections indicate that by 2050, the number of Latinos will increase to 97 million; this number will constitute nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population. Projections for the...

Public Conceptions of Mental Illness in 1950 and 1996: What Is Mental Illness and Is It to be Feared?

February 21, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

In the 1950s, the public defined mental illness in much narrower and more extreme terms than did psychiatry, and fearful and rejecting attitudes toward people with mental illnesses were common. Several indicators suggest that definitions of mental illness may have broadened and that rejection and negative stereotypes may have decreased since that time. Howevev, lack of comparable data over time prevents us from drawing firm conclusions on these questions. To address this problem, the Mental Health Module of the 1996 General Social Survey repeated a question regarding the meaning of mental illness that was first asked of a nationally representative sample in 1950. A comparison of 1950 and 1996 results shows that conceptions of mental illness have broadened somewhat over this time period to include a greaterproportion of non-psychotic disorders, but that perceptions that mentally ill people are violent or frightening substantially increased, rather than decreased...

The State of Mental Health on College Campuses: A Growing Crisis

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In a December 19 article, the New York Times reported on a phenomenon that colleges across the country are all too familiar with: the rising number of students grappling with serious mental health problems that are seeking treatment at campus counseling centers. The article brought attention to an alarming and growing trend that began in the early to mid-1990s. At that time, university and college counseling centers noticed a shift in the needs of students seeking counseling services from more developmental and informational needs, to more severe psychological problems.

In the past decade this shift has not only solidified, it has reached increasingly higher levels. In the 2010 National Survey of Counseling Center Directors, respondents reported that 44 percent of their clients had severe psychological problems, a sharp increase from 16 percent in 2000. The most common of these disorders are depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse..,

Investing In Global Mental Health: The Time For Action Is Now

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Despite widespread acknowledgement of the economic and global burden of mental disorders (as represented in years of life lost to disability and mortality), acting on these concerns and creating an investment plan for global mental health has been challenging. This failure can be explained by many factors, including scepticism about prevalence data for mental disorders. Without precise biological measures, these disorders might be viewed as being defined culturally by high-income countries, or as having overly inclusive criteria that reject traditional ideas of normal human suffering. Additionally, a perceived absence of effective treatments in low-income countries already facing overwhelming challenges of infectious diseases and other disorders and limited infrastructure might make attention to mental illnesses less of an immediate priority. Likewise, mental disorders might be more overtly associated with disability than death, despite evidence of early mortality due to suicide or other medical disorders.

Diagnosing Mental Illness Through Neuroimaging Scans

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Table of Contents: Older Methods Potential Benefits Possible Drawbacks Good Choices Find Out More

Diagnosing a mental illness isn’t always easy. In fact, it can be a subjective process that allows one clinician to see one disease, while another sees a different disease and a third sees nothing at all, even when all three medical practitioners are looking at the same patient. This kind of uncertainty can be annoying, but it can also lead to very serious problems, as some might not get the right diagnosis or the right treatment for a very real mental health issue.

In a perfect world, a person with symptoms of a mental illness could get a simple test that would definitively diagnose the problem or prove that no problem really exists. Some believe that neuroimaging scans provide this opportunity, but others aren’t so sure that the scans can ever take...

Dietary Supplements in Mental Health Care

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In the wake of the recent and very public controversy over weight loss supplements, it would be easy to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Inadequate regulation of supplements has allowed the public to invest considerable money in treatments that may not contain what is stated on the label, can have scant research supporting their use, and in some cases may cause potential harm. Yet, there are supplements that have good evidence of benefit for emotional, cognitive, or other health-related issues, appear to be low risk, and when judiciously used, may be important therapuetic adjuncts for those who have ongoing challenges with mood or other mental health issues.

Supplements Use is Prevalent

Americans spend nearly $34 billion annually on complementary and alternative (CAM) remedies, with approximately 14.8 billion spend on nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products such as fish oil,...

Influencing Behavior and Mental Processes in Covert Operations

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

In the early 1950s, U.S. intelligence concluded that the KGB, Soviet intelligence, was working hard to develop "mind control" and behavior modification drugs. Supporting evidence included the public "confessions" of numerous high-ranking communist officials, the high-profile trial in Hungary of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, who appeared to have been drugged as he confessed to treasonous crimes, and the unusual behavior of American POWs during the Korean War. The filmed testimony of American POWs telling the world that America was evil and that communism was a far superior form of government was an especially compelling example.

On April 10, 1953, Allen W. Dulles, newly confirmed CIA director, alerted a gathering of Princeton alumni to the problem. A "sinister battle for men's minds" was underway, he explained. The Soviets "have developed brain perversion techniques, some of which are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that...

Covert Behavior And Mental Terms: A Reply To Moore

February 20, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

In a recent paper, Moore (2001) compares the behavior analytic treatment of so-called mental phenomena with other behaviorist approaches, in particular, with logical behaviorism and conceptual analysis (see also Moore, 1980, 1981, 1995). Moore concludes that behavior analysis gives a more adequate account of the phenomena than the other positions. In this note, I will argue that the behavior analytic treatment has itself some fundamental shortcomings. These problems are avoided if we adopt a behaviorist theory that has the following features: (i) it only accepts the existence of entities (factors, events, states, etc.) if this existence is supported by empirical evidence, (ii) it is based on Quine’s materialist repudiation theory which assigns no role at all to mental entities, (iii) it acknowledges the well documented fact that organisms can acquire new behavior not only by operant conditioning but also by being exposed to the pairing of two (salient) stimuli.

Mental Health Outcomes Measuring for Quality and Accountability

February 21, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

With accountability pressures and growing concerns about quality of services, managers, practitioners, and system planners need resources to measure the outcomes of the services they provide and should be aware of the best efforts to measure client outcomes and services effectiveness. This newsletter provides resources for program administrators, managers, policy makers, and others about the implementation and use of outcome measurement. The drive toward accountability that is occurring in the mental health field is explored, as are other reasons for measuring client outcomes. Outcome measures and instruments developed as part of multi-site studies sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) are described inside; and can serve as a valuable resource in planning an evaluation or quality assurance initiative. Also included is a set of considerations when planning and conducting a program outcome evaluation....

Mental Health Promotion in Public Health: Perspectives and Strategies From Positive Psychology

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Positive psychology is the study of what is “right” about people—their positive attributes, psychological assets, and strengths. Its aim is to understand and foster the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to thrive.

Cross-sectional, experimental, and longitudinal research demonstrates that positive emotions are associated with numerous benefits related to health, work, family, and economic status. Growing biomedical research supports the view that positive emotions are not merely the opposite of negative emotions but may be independent dimensions of mental affect.

The asset-based paradigms of positive psychology offer new approaches for bolstering psychological resilience and promoting mental health. Ultimately, greater synergy between positive psychology and public health might help promote mental health in innovative ways.

Mental health promotion seeks to foster individual competencies, resources, and psychological strengths, and to strengthen community assets to prevent mental disorder and enhance well-being and quality of life...

The Distinction Between Mental And Physical Illness

November 17, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Conditions that now would be regarded as ‘mental illnesses’, such as mania, melancholia and hysteria, have figured in classifications of disease since the time of Hippocrates, and for over 2000 years were treated by physicians with much the same range of potions, medicaments and attempts to correct humoral imbalance as they employed for other more obviously medical disorders. Although Plato attributed some forms of madness to the Gods, and meduieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas attributed hallucinations and insanity to demons and other supernatural influences, from the Renaissance to the second half of the 18th century melancholia and other forms of insanity were generally regarded as bodily illnesses, not differing in any fundamental way from other diseases. When the mid-18th century belle lettriste Lady Mary Wortley Montagu commented that “madness is as much a corporeal distemper as the gout or asthma”, ...

Complementary & Alternative Medicine for Mental Health

February 21, 2019October 20, 2017 by admin

This outline is a comparative research-based approach to that question. While some activities, like exercise, are good for everyone who is physically able to do them and have no uncontrollable side effects, most decisions about CAM treatment options, and especially the decisions faced by people coping with serious mental health conditions, involve trade-offs. Nonetheless, 40% or more of Americans treat themselves with CAM without professional supervision, often without disclosing it to their psychiatrist or primary care provider. Moreover, many patients who use CAM remedies also take prescription antidepressants, risking potentially dangerous adverse herb/drug interactions. While most natural psychotropics are generally safe, they are not risk free, and the common public misconception that natural products are inherently safe has been refuted by predictions and reports of toxic reactions from these agents, which may be due to intrinsic toxicity, ,, or interaction with other herbs or drugs...

Labeling You a Mental Health Patient

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

I am advocating that we rethink the whole field of psychology. As we embark on rethinking what we mean by normal, what we mean by mental health, and what we mean by psychotherapy, a first step is removing the labels that we give to people who look for help with their "mental health problems" or who are sent for help for those "problems."

All "mental health disorder" labels ought to be rethought. They flow from a specious, incoherent definition of "mental disorder" and amount to little more than the affixing of fancy-sounding disorder labels to bundles of putative "symptoms." In addition-and the subject of this article-the very naming of the person who walks into the office of a "mental health provider" ought to be rethought. Is that person really a "patient"?

Right now those people are known as either "patients" or "clients." I'll tackle the problems associated with...

Mental Health Courts Resource Guide

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Court-based problem-solving initiatives seek to address the growing number of mentally ill defendants that have entered the criminal justice system by focusing on the immediate pressures that have led to the development of the mental health court strategy, as well as the challenging applications for this therapeutically oriented judicial approach.

Links to related online resources are listed below. Non-digitized publications may be borrowed from the NCSC Library; call numbers are provided.

Mental Health Court Performance Measures (MHCPM). MHCPM is a set of 14 performance measures that offers court managers and administrators a tool to monitor the performance of mental health courts.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum. The National Center for State Courts partnered with Council of State Governments to develop this free curriculum for courts wishing to develop a mental health court.

Waters, Nicole L. State Standards: Building Better Mental Health Courts. (2015). As formal mental health courts (MHCs) enter their third decade in existence, policymakers...

The Impact of Mental Illness Stigma on Seeking and Participating in Mental Health Care

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Court-based problem-solving initiatives seek to address the growing number of mentally ill defendants that have entered the criminal justice system by focusing on the immediate pressures that have led to the development of the mental health court strategy, as well as the challenging applications for this therapeutically oriented judicial approach.

Links to related online resources are listed below. Non-digitized publications may be borrowed from the NCSC Library; call numbers are provided.

Mental Health Court Performance Measures (MHCPM). MHCPM is a set of 14 performance measures that offers court managers and administrators a tool to monitor the performance of mental health courts.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum. The National Center for State Courts partnered with Council of State Governments to develop this free curriculum for courts wishing to develop a mental health court.

Waters, Nicole L. State Standards: Building Better Mental Health Courts. (2015). As formal mental health courts (MHCs) enter their third decade in existence, policymakers...

Urbanization and Mental Health

November 18, 2018October 20, 2017 by admin

Urbanization, defined as the increase in the number of cities and urban population, is not only a demographic movement but also includes, social, economic and psychological changes that constitute the demographic movement. It is a process that leads to the growth of cities due to industrialization and economic development (M. Tayfun Turan, Aslı Besirl 2008). The rapid increase in urban population worldwide is one among the important global health issues of the 21st century. According to the projections of the United Nations Population Division, by 2030, more people in the developing world will live in urban than rural areas; by 2050, two-thirds of its population is likely to be urban. The scenario in India is also affected by this trend. In India approximately 28% of the India’s population lives in cities and this is expected to increase to 41% by the year 2020 (UN World Urbanization Prospects 2008).

Urbanization brings with it a...