Mental Health and its Impact on Individuals: A Personal Perspective

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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MENTAL HEALTH
Question 1.
Mental health is an elusive but necessary concept which could be defined as the state of
well being that enable individuals to be fruitful and able to behave normally (Rogers & Pilgrim,
2014). Therefore, mental well being is a crucial factor for each individual in order to live a
peaceful life. However, mental illness like any other medical illness affected mental wellbeing
and destabilize the associated lifestyle of individuals (Seeman, 2015). Mental illness from minor
symptoms to severe psychotic disturbance can influence the lifestyle of individual including their
beliefs, attitude, and feelings (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). There are certain factors
that influence my personal opinion, believes, attitude towards people with mental illness (Lê
Cook et al., 2014) . As a student, my contribution to patient care is very limited for that patient
who has the mental illness. However, my personal opinion, social surroundings, religion believes
holds a huge position in influences my opinion about the individuals with mental health. During
my placement in the mental health department of Australian care, I spent approximately three
weeks and I was surprised when I came to realize that each individual has very unique
psychological and social circumstances that influence their mental illness. Therefore, those
individuals who have serious mental issues such as schizophrenia, bipolar, major depressive
disorder have the different emotional response to some kind of stimulus (Chung, 2017). My
perception of mental health also shaped by media, social and digital which influences the opinion
for those individuals. In many places, mental illness is regarded as the problem of individual
only also have the consequences that in turn influences my opinion of mental health.
When I was very young, I saw a neighbor of mine, she was suffering from schizophrenia. She
used to talk to her and usually become very paranoid when confronting any human being. She

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MENTAL HEALTH
had very difficult cognitive behavior and hallucinate many things. I realized that an individual’s
self-esteem, relationship with family members and surrounding helps influences the mental
health. Therapeutic communication is more important in curing mental issues than medicine
administration (Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). Therefore, when I would interact with
them I would be more compassionate, I would show empathy, I would be focusing on individual
needs and do not stereotypy their situation.
Question 2.
Social media has a huge impact on shaping the public opinion of the masses (Gibbons,
Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). They can form of modifying any opinion of individuals in a
different way depending on the objective (Schomerus et al., 2016). The frequency of using
Different social networking site such as Face book, twitter increases rapidly. Therefore, the
social media influences the individuals in the mostly negative way and has a positive impact
(Gibbons, Thorsteinsson, & Loi, 2015). After seeing several posts of individual people, I tend to
become more stereotypic about certain mental illness and which in turn offend the people with
whom I interact on the daily basis. A serious of myth, which severe only to quarantine the mental
illness from the rest of the society are considered as the stigma. Therefore, social media made me
believe certain social stigma that influences my opinion on mental health. Previously, I used to
believe that depression is not a disorder but a state of mind since everybody was posting
something on the social media about the depression and their consequences. After going through
certain evidence-based journals I realized that depression is a major psychological disorder