Mental Health and Illness: Causes of Depression and Approaches for Treatment

Mental Health and Illness

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Explain the causes of Mr. G’s depression from at least 3 different perspectives / approaches
within psychology (i.e. medical, psycho-dynamic, behaviorists, cognitive and humanistic
theories)..................................................................................................................................4
Explain the different approaches for treating depression from different psychological
perspectives............................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Mental health is a term of high concern which includes social, psychological, emotional
and sometimes physical well-being of an individual. Mental health is essential in every phase of
life. It is the major component which define someone's mood, behaviour, influence way of
thinking, way of talking, reacting, etc. There are several factors responsible for mental health
problems like life experiences, biological factors, genetic factors. A person suffering from
mental illness may exhibit some symptoms like eating inadequately, sounds like nothing matters
and everything is useless, tendency to ignore people, having low energy, usually feels to be
confused, upset or angry, irritated over small things, severe mood swings, etc. Depression is a
chronic mental illness related to the uplifting or lowering of person's mood. It is a major
depressive disorder which highly influence the thoughts of and individual, their performance at
work place, persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest in every activity and work. It may
even result in causing variety of physical and emotional complications.
MAIN BODY
Question 1
Explain the difficulties in defining ‘abnormality’ and normality.
Normality and Abnormality vary from person to person. It is a subjective term which
depends on perception of people. Something normal to one can be abnormal to other person on
the basis of his/her thinking. Definition of abnormality vary widely by person, place, situation,
time. Apart of difficulties in defining 'normal', it is essential to set up some guidelines to help
people who are suffering. To resolve this, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-5) standardize a hierarchy to differentiate abnormal behaviour and symptoms from normal
one. DSM categorisation can be done analysing the reaction during stressful condition. Those
reactions are considered as normal which does not harm anyone and does not violate any societal
norms but opposite to this bare considered as abnormal ones. In Mr. G's case, he is not violating
any society norms and does not causing any harm to anyone, it may look like normal behaviour
and normal psychological condition but he is exhibiting abnormal behaviour by his ignoring his
responsibilities over his partner and daughter (Baucom, D.H.,et.al., 2019). In this case, Mr. G’s
response to his workplace situation causing significant impairment on his concentration, focus
and decisive power is an indication of a psychological disorder. Four main models to explain
psychological abnormality are the biological, behavioural, cognitive and psychodynamic models.