Mental Health: Understanding, Management and Challenges

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MENTAL HEALTH
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Mental health includes human psychological, emotional and social wellbeing. It is part of the
brain that influences how we think, how we feel and how we act. Simultaneously, it determines
how we handle stress situation, relates and interact with others and the type of choices that we
make (Abuse, 2013). Within the course of life, if someone experiences the mental health illness
or problems, the mode of thinking, reasoning, moods, behavior, and judgment are likely to be
affected. There are several factors that contribute to mental health problems and they include;
life experiences that cause trauma to neurological system or use of substances such as drugs e.g.
bhang, cocaine and other narcotics, inheritance and hereditary when there is a history of mental
health in the family and also biological factors such as genes or brain chemistry (Abuse, 2013). If
someone is about to develop mental health illness, there are early warning signs which includes;
too much eating, too much or little sleeping, alienating oneself from the people and from the
usual routine activities or developing unusual antisocial behavior, experiencing body weakness,
feeling hopeless and helpless, too much smoking, feeling abnormally confused more frequently,
forgetful, upset, unnecessarily angry, worries with no cause, and feeling scared. Others include
severe mood swing causing relational interruption, harming oneself or others impulsively, and
also the inability to perform activities of daily living such as going to work or taking kids to
school and also experiencing hallucinations. According to the National Survey of Mental Health
and Wellbeing that was done in 2007 in Australia, it shows that almost half (45%) of total
population experience mental disorder in their lifetime, which is equivalent to almost 3.2 million
of Australians (Morgan et al., 2014). Females were more likely to experience mental health
problems (23%) compared to males (17.6%). Also, the younger populations aged between 16-24
years experience mental disorders (26.4%) more than the older population (5.9%) aged 75-85%

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(Whiteford, 2015). Other social factors that contributed to mental disorders development
includes, being unmarried, unemployment, and poor level of education.
There are shrewd shared roles and responsibilities in the management of mental health care
services in Australia, whereby services are being delivered and funded simultaneously by the
government of Australia, that is the state and territorial governments together with the private
sector and non-governmental sectors. The Government of Australia also subsidizes mental health
services via primary health networks, the national disability insurance scheme, the PBS,
headspace, and RPBS (Stocking et al, 2012). Mental health services are offered in various ways
which include; admitted patient care in the hospital and other residential care, hospital-based
outpatient services, and community-based care services together with private consultations with
both the specialist medical practitioner, psychologists, psychiatrist and general practitioners
(Whiteford et al.2014). There are also mainstream programs that offer essential support to people
with mental health disorders such as social and community support, disability services, and
participating workforce and housing assistance which are funded by the government. Services
from the private sector include; management of admitted patients in their psychiatric hospital
facilities and also private health services offered by the psychologist, psychiatrists, and other
allied health care providers. According to the National survey that was done in 2007, majority of
those who did not receive mental health services reported that they did not see the need of
seeking such services (Slade et al. 2009) hence ignored it all.
There are two types of health care in Australia and includes; public and private health care
(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019). There are values and principles that underline
the above health care are; inclusion, respect and trust, resilience, responsibility, reflection and
action, and unity and diversity. Principles that govern the above are; respect for the rights and