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Mental Health Literacy

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Words: 1032 |

Pages: 2|

6 min read

Published: Jun 5, 2019

Words: 1032|Pages: 2|6 min read

Published: Jun 5, 2019

When one is experiencing the possibility of mental health disorder in his/her own health, or in one’s environment, one tends to find ways to manage the symptoms, however, one’s mental health literacy greatly influences the management outcomes. One is expected to reduce the experienced symptoms via adequate mental health management. This entails that those who are aware of the mental illness the symptoms indicate, are more likely to understand the different methods available to reduce the pain and suffering paired with the illness, thus the management of one’s health is more successful (Jorm, 2000) There is a dire need in public health for the general public to develop skills and abilities to recognize, and handle these situations, due to the fact that more and more individuals are expected to develop related symptoms at least once throughout their lifetime (Jorm, 2000). The ability to recognize mental illnesses is a complex task for the general public.

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According to Jorm (2000), the public lacks the ability to recognize mental disorders and understand the related psychological terms. This result has been shown in several studies, where individuals from the general public could not recognize the mental disorder of a person (Jorm et al, 1997; Hillert et al, 1999), or could not even define the characteristics of common mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia (Angermeyer & Matschinger. 1996). The failure to recognize mental health illnesses appropriately may cause further problems and misunderstandings when it comes to communicating the illness to health professionals. General Practitioners (GPs) do not tend to recognize mental illnesses in patients, due to their style of interviewing (Goldberg & Huxley, 1992), however, the patient’s way of explaining the symptoms, reflecting on the actual psychological problem is high of importance to adequately diagnose the mental illness (Herran et al., 1999). Unfortunately, only a small amount of people seeks professional help for their mental illnesses, after recognizing the known symptoms, therefore the importance of self-help has increased (Jorm, 2000). The most popular self-help interventions include spending quality time with their family and friends, finding new hobbies or exercising, which can all contribute to one’s adequate mental illness management.

Literature has shown that engaging in social activities and asking for social support is, doing physical exercise and reading books that detail the ways of self-helping in such cases, has shown effectiveness to ease one’s mental suffering (Goldberg & Huxley, 1992). When it comes to recognizing mental illness of others, and helping them, literature has shown that the public has difficulties in engaging those with mental illnesses, or even to recognize the problem. Brändly in 1999 has shown that the public does not know how to behave around mentally ill people, due to the lack of knowledge they tend to be too afraid to engage and make possible mistakes. Mental health illnesses in general such as depressive, anxiety, addictive, bipolar, etc. disorders, unfortunately, also face public stigmatization, therefore those involved are less likely seek help, or unable to talk about their illness due to the fear of negative public reaction. In Germany for example, the public was found to be more willing to talk about their physical illnesses, than about their mental health among their friends and family (Hillert et al., 1999). According to Angermeyer & Dietrich (2006) mentally ill patients tend to be stigmatized by the general public, and may be perceived to be strange, aggressive, frightening, violent, and all in all, dangerous to be engaged with. These stigmas associated with mental illnesses have significant consequences in one’s recovery. When one is stigmatized, one’s personal relationships with friends and family may worsen.

They can experience distress, avoid seeking professional help, and tend to have difficulties in achieving educational and career goals in general (Hansson et al., 2011). Jorm & Oh (2009) found that specific characteristics of the public can determine their negative attitude towards mental illnesses, such as gender, age, education and level of familiarity with mental illnesses. In general, western societies have shown greater knowledge in mental health and less stigmatization towards the mentally ill (Jorm, 2000). When it comes to post-communist and Easter-European countries, information about the level of stigmatization towards mentally ill patients, mental health literacy is unfortunately insufficient (Evans-Lacko, 2014). One of the aspects of mental health illness understanding is the way the media presents the issue to the public. According to Anderson (2003) the primary source of obtaining information about such illnesses is the printed and other media types. The negative presentation of mental illnesses in the media is shown to have negative effects on one’s attitude towards the topic (Angermeyer & Matschinger, 1996). Additionally, this negative presentation of mental illnesses has shown to affect those living with such illnesses in a negative way (Grinfeld, 1998). According to the study of Navkowá et al. (2012) focusing on the media on mental illnesses in Croatia, Chechia and Slovakia, the presence of printed media that presents mental illnesses negatively is 1.8 times higher, than those that present the topic positively.

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There is unfortunately a lack of further studies about the public perception of mental illnesses in Eastern Europe. Jorm et al. (1997) defined mental health literacy as “the knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention” (p. 184). According to Jorm’s conceptual framework (2000) mental health literacy additionally consists of several components, such as; “(a) the ability to recognize specific disorders or different types of psychological distress; (b) knowledge and beliefs about risk factors and causes; (c) knowledge and beliefs about self-help interventions; (d) knowledge and beliefs about professional help available; (e) attitudes which facilitate recognition and appropriate help seeking; and (f) knowledge of how to seek mental health information” (p. 396). To date, this conceptual framework is the most comprehensive one in this field of science according to the literature. The present study analyses mental health literacy in line with the first component of the framework, which is “the ability to recognize specific disorders or different types of psychological distress” (Jorm, 2000, p. 396). According to the author’s best knowledge, this framework on mental health literacy has never been tested in Hungary, therefore the results of the study are expected to fill a scientific gap in the topic.

Cite this Essay

Mental Health Literacy. (2019, May 14). GradesFixer. Retrieved March 28, 2024, from https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/mental-health-literacy/
“Mental Health Literacy.” GradesFixer, 14 May 2019, gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/mental-health-literacy/
Mental Health Literacy. [online]. Available at: <https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/mental-health-literacy/> [Accessed 28 Mar. 2024].
Mental Health Literacy [Internet]. GradesFixer. 2019 May 14 [cited 2024 Mar 28]. Available from: https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/mental-health-literacy/
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