Mental Illness AP Psychology 2nd Block B Day Nelson Lopez, Marcelo Portela, Shiloh Shalom, Cairo Stewman

Overview Mental Illness can be described as wide range of conditions that affect mood, thinking, and behavior in the truest sense of the words. There’s a stigma around Mental Illnesses, that the people who have them are all purely crazy, and that they need to be in a mental facility. However, this isn’t true, many people have mental disorders in today’s world. Teachers, Students, Policemen, Lawmakers, and many more people could have been diagnosed with a Disorder and no one would even think to know. Many different psychologist would diagnose the disorders in different ways with different solutions and different causes.

Perspective 1: Humanistic Key Take-Aways: Current Environmental Influences & Internal Growth Potential within the Individual. Causes: Commonly, people today live on the feedback and responses of others. Today’s culture is commonly a negative influence with a focus on competition. People are constantly being pressured to be the best and if they aren’t, they get tossed. This stunts their personal inner growth to the point where it harms their self esteem and by extension, their mental health. If we aren’t able to grow as a person, the stress and pressures around us tend to pull humans into Despair. Solutions: We need to be able to create situations and environments where Humans will allowed to grow and mature without the possibility of rejection or outstanding failure. If we could manufacture positive influences and jumpstart personal growth, we’ll might be able to focus on reducing certain mental illness cases.

Perspective 2: Psycho-Dynamic Key Take-Aways: Your Unconscious Mind’s Drives, Conflicts, and Desires influence and drives your behavior. Causes: When you black out you don’t remember what you did. If you have a mental disorder such as severe anger problems, and it’s hard for you to remember what you do during your “ unconscious mind drive” that could be a real problem. It’s hard to treat a mental disorder when you don't remember what you may have done. Solutions: What people could do to help these individuals is a specialized therapy session. We could try and discover what drives them in their unconsciousness, help them understand their ego, superego, and ID. If we can find and resolve the unconscious issues locked away in a person, we might be able to reduce the number of Mental Illness cases.

Perspective 3: Biological Key Take-Aways: application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals Causes: according to the biological perspective, some mental illnesses can be credited to abnormal functioning of nerve cell circuits, pathways that connect particular brain regions, communicating through chemicals called neurotransmitters. Defects in or injury to certain areas of the brain have also been linked to some mental conditions. Solutions: "Tweaking" these chemicals through medicines, psychotherapy or other medical procedures, can help brain circuits run more efficiently, At this time, most mental illnesses cannot be cured, but they can usually be treated effectively to minimize the symptoms and allow the individual to function in work, school, or social environments.

Perspective 4: Evolutionary Perspective Focus: How the natural selection of traits promoted the survival of genes. Causes: Passing down genes to offspring is something inevitable. Its how natural selection takes place. However not only positive traits are inherited. If the father or the grandfather suffers from a certain condition, it's very likely for the child to have it. Thousands of years ago it was less likely for bad genes to be passed down since “only the strong survived”, however today even the sickest man can have a family. This means all these negative traits are being passed down. Solution: Not much can be done to fix this. You can’t ban a man from having a family just because he or someone further back in his family experience some sort of mental illness, and one can’t just pick out someone's genes. The only thing that can be done is to be mindful of offspring possibly inheriting it, and be ready if he/she does. I only see 7 approaches

Perspective 5: Cognitive Perspective Focus: cognitive psychology is interested in what is happening within our minds that links stimulus (input) and response (output), studying internal processes that include perception, attention, language, memory, and thinking. Causes: Similar to the biological perspective, psychologists focused on the cognitive perspective might relate mental illnesses to physical problems within the brain. Like most mental disorders, cognitive disorders are caused by a variety of factors. Some are due to hormonal imbalances in the womb, others to genetic problems and others to environmental factors. (see environmental perspective) Solution: The most widely used drugs for cognitive disorders are antidepressants and drugs that prevent the further decay of memory. Such drugs can make it possible to extend the awareness of a person affected by cognitive issues by many years.

Perspective 6: Behavioral Perspective Focus: How We learn Observable Responses Causes: Kids learn from what they see. Their parents are their biggest influences. commonly when kids grow up to have some sort of mental illness looking at it from the behavioral perspective, it can be traced back to their parents. Kids who grow up to have things such as depression, very often come from a broken household. A small child who witnesses his father abuse his mother, is very likely to grow up to abuse his own wife. Solution: All parents should raise their kids giving the right example, respecting one another, and showing their children the rights from wrong. That way the child can grow up with a healthier mind.

Perspective 7: Social-Cultural Perspective Focus: How situations and culture affect mental illness. Causes: One way that mental illness is affected by culture, is the way that the patients describe their abnormal behavior to their doctor. If the condition is diagnosed wrong, then the medication that the patient receives can possibly harm them or make the condition worse. In some cultures, pill taking, which is the standard for treating mental illness, is frowned upon and it is seen as a sign of weakness, so therefore people refuse to take them, making the condition worse. Solutions: Doctors can run clinical trials to find out different types of treatment processes instead of pills so that people with cultural beliefs have the option to choose which one would they like to receive. Also, doctors could run more psychiatric tests so they could properly diagnose mental disorders more accurately instead of diagnosing based off of the patients statements

Bonus Perspective: Structuralism Key Take-Aways: Internal Reflection, Experiences, Internal Emotions Causes: Commonly in today’s time period, Mental Illness has the ability to be caused by a variety of factors, with Introspection being one of them. If people try to look too far into themselves, they could fall down an abyss of what they’re lacking at/in. They might become obsessed and disillusioned at the prospect of filling that void and get consumed in that process. This would lead them further and further away from themselves. Solutions: We could try to focus on people’s good points. As a society, Humans could try and accept flaws more often and not demand certain requirements of people. People should be given a venue to try and “find themselves” in a safe environment that wouldn’t cause their downfall in an affordable manner. We should also create programs that would help with someone’s introspective journey and to provide support should they desire it. If we can do these things, we could see a reduction in the amount of Mental Illness cases each year.

Conclusion There are several different mental disorders and several different ways to psychologically look at them. Each way you look at it there’s a different explanation. However when treating a mental disorder is a good to look at it through all the perspectives.

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