Impact of Mental Illness on Clients, Families, and Caregivers

This article discusses the impact of mental illness on clients, families, and caregivers. It also outlines the principles of recovery and therapeutic optimism and how they can assist clients and their families/carers.

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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1. Impact of mental illness from a client centered perspective, family and carers
perspective
Mental illness can be painful and traumatic for the family members and can have a huge
impact on the financial and the emotional components. It is a clinical condition that affects
the thinking of a person, mood or the feeling. Such a condition may affect the person ability
to interact with others and physical functionality. There are several aspects that may give rise
to mental health disorders. Mental health disorders have a far reaching influences on the
education, employment and physical health of a people. A people with mental health disorder
faces with stigmatization and discrimination that can case marginalization of these people. A
person having mental health problem might feel depressed with the fear of getting rejected or
becoming burden to the family.
The perspective of the caregivers and the family members, looking after someone with
mental health problems can be stressful and managing with the stress may lead to various
problem such as loss of appetite, migraine, fatigue and burnout). It can also lead to emotional
and cognitive issues such as depression, anxiety, guilt, fear, confusion and behavioral changes.
Family support is seen to be crucial for taking care of people with mental health disorder. Apart
from the emotional support provided by the caregivers. There are several ways by which the
caregivers support the patients. Providing a continued care can be different, as families often
becomes frustrated and exhausted. Sometimes they have to live in seclusion, people might
discriminate against the members of the family. As perceived by the family members and the
caregivers, they are faced with some barriers in providing care to the patient with mental illness.
Many family members have admitted that they find it difficult to access proper mental healthcare

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services in terms of geographical affordability. In terms of costs, patients and the family
members have stated that they have to spend a lot in the transportation costs. Some of the
personal caregivers have also reported that often they do not know where to take the patient due
to the absence of specialist health professionals or there are no psychiatrist, nurses or
psychologists in the mental health care centers. In most of the cases, mental health patient are
not entertained in the primary care centers. Negative attitude or stigma has also been noticed in
many caregivers. Caregivers have often stated: “Yeah, sometimes I feel afraid, because if relapse
occurs, he often hit me, and I think that he is dangerous”. There had been evidences, where the
health care professionals also hold negative attitude against these people (Tristiana et al. 2018).
They have reported that health care professionals sometimes looks down to them and speaks
rudely, or sometimes the information from the nurses and the doctors are incomprehensible and
they do not even try to cooperate.
2. Outline of the principles of Recovery and Therapeutic optimism and how this can assist
clients and their families/carers
The national framework for the recovery oriented mental health services gives a vital new
policy for enhancing the delivery of the mental health service in Australia. This framework
describes the lived experience of the recovery of the people. This guides the way to a recovery
oriented practice to serve a diverse number of people with mental health issues.
The recovery oriented concept mainly provides a transformative conceptual framework for
practicing culture and service delivery. The recovery oriented services recognize the needs of the
people who use the service rather than on organizational practice. The recovery model consists
of 5 domains and 17 capabilities. Domain 1 of the recovery model emphasizes on giving value

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respect to a person by promoting a language and a culture of hope and optimism. The second
domain of the recovery model suggests viewing the life of a person holistically. The third
domain of the recovery model focuses on the concept of personal recovery. The mental health
services should promote wellbeing and personal growth of an individual and commit to the
reduction of involuntary actions. As per this domain, autonomy should be considered as the
fundamental to recovery. The caregivers should understand the importance of positive learning
and positive risk taking to recovery. The personal recovery model focuses on the strengths and
personal responsibilities of the patient. It is necessary to acknowledge and reinforce the strength
and capacity of the person for personal recovery. In order to provide the chance of personal
recovery it is necessary to understand the values, beliefs, biases and their life experience, this
would automatically built trust and reciprocity with the clients. The fourth domain of the
recovery orated model is the organizational commitment and development of the workforce for
supporting personal recovery. The social, physical and the cultural ambience of the service will
be able to inspire optimism, hope and humanistic strategies.
The fifth domain of personal recovery framework consists of Action on social
determinants of health and social inclusion. The family or the carers should try to uphold the
human rights of the person with mental illness. They should focus on social inclusion as social
inclusion is a vital element to recovery.
Construction of a therapeutic alliance between the therapist and the client or the family
enhances the recovery process. One of the essential quality of therapeutic optimism is the
construction of the personal bond between the therapist and the client. Relationship alliance, task
alliance helps to establish trust and rapport. It enables the client and the family to adhere to the
treatment regimen.

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It can be said that, assisting people to get access to the right combination of services,
supports, treatments and elimination of the discrimination by removing the barriers to
participation in education, job and community, is the crucial element to the promotion and
adoption of a recovery oriented practice within mental health services.
References
Tristiana, R.D., Yusuf, A., Fitryasari, R., Wahyuni, S.D. and Nihayati, H.E., 2018. Perceived
barriers on mental health services by the family of patients with mental illness. International
journal of nursing sciences, 5(1), pp.63-67.