Mental Health Nursing: Analysis of Historical and Current Factors Influencing Recovery

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
NAME OF THE Student
Name of the University
Author note

1MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
Introduction:
According to the report published by the World Health Organization (2018), it has been
mentioned that one in four people are affected with a certain kind of mental disorder. It has
further been stated that approximately 450 million people are affected with a form of mental
illness or a neurological disorder at a certain point in their life (Blackwell et al., 2014). This has
led to mental health emerge out as one of the leading causes of disability and infirmity
worldwide. Although, a broad spectrum of treatments are available for mental health disorders,
an average of two-thirds of the global population refrain from seeking professional help (Geddes
& Miklowitz, 2013). This is primarily on account of societal stigma, discrimination and negative
perception towards mental health illness and disorders. It should further be noted in this regard
that approximately 33% of the Nations allocate less than 1% of their total health budget to
mental health and at the same time, other nations allocate a total of 1% of the entire health
budget to effectively tackle the disease burden of mental health problems (Gansel & Leze, 2015).
The poor percentage critically reflects the lack of seriousness within the policy makers to realise
the importance of maintaining mental wellness in people.
In this context, this paper intends to analyse the historical and current factors that govern
the process of mental health recovery. In addition to this, the paper would delve deeper into
formulating an explanation about mental health recovery as in case of the subject Victor, who is
a mental health patient, suffering from Bipolar Disorder. The medical history of the client
critically reports incidences of ‘euphoria’ and ‘sadness’. Further, the subject has also been
reported to hallucinate and experience bizarre feelings equivalent to becoming ‘invisible’ and
‘ruling the world.’ The paper would elaborate the recovery principles that would be applied to

2MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
the client and present a critical reflection based upon the clinical experience to improvise the
intervention strategies in order to acquire positive treatment outcome in future. Also, the
recommendations to enhance the scope of practice would be discussed along with a conclusion.
At the end of the paper, the two respective supervision logs dealing with observation and
intervention would also be provided for reference.

3MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
Analysis of the historical and current factors influencing recovery
As per the world health organization (2018), health and wellbeing is the cumulative result
of a fit body and stress free mind determining both physical and mental wellness (O'Hagan,
2001). This definition of health is important in this context as researchers and psychiatrists
mention that few decades ago, aspects related to mental health was not included in determining
overall wellbeing of individuals (Warner et al., 2013). The current concept of recovery is
inclusive of biomedical models and multiple biological factors are taken into account while
determining the mental health of individuals (Perkins & Repper, 2003). This is a major
achievement as in the presence of social stigma and wide spread discrimination, evolution of
psychiatry and mental illness recovery helps to change the mindset of society through its
historical development. In this aspect, it is important to understand that recovery and biomedical
cure are two different approaches (Perkins & Repper. 1996). recovery helps the individual
suffering from mental health by providing them hope, understanding their abilities and
disabilities so that they can take active part in their daily life, increasing their autonomy and
providing them with a purpose to recover from their illness so that they can feel positive about
their self (Perkins & Repper, 1994).
While discussing the historical evolution of mental illness and theory of recovery, the
widespread social stigma about mental illness should be mentioned which isolated mentally ill
individuals from the rest of the society (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2014). These
ideas encrypted the society for a longer period which ultimately was reformed after development
of several psychiatric theories and healthcare professionals started considering mental illness as
an integral part of overall wellness of people (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2009).