Mental Illness and its Impact on Perinatal Mental Health: A Case Study

Running head: MENTAL ILLNESS
MENTAL ILLNESS
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Author’s Note:

MENTAL ILLNESS
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Answer number 1.
The case study is related to Lucinda Okiro, who was undergoing anxiety and depression
for which she was presented for a mental health assessment to perinatal mental health service
with her daughter Emily. The main area of concern for the Lucinda is the feeling of fear and
anxiety related to her second pregnancy. She is frightened that she will become pregnant because
they have a financial crisis and have to leave her studies for the sake of the unborn child. She is
also worried as her first pregnancy had many complications and she is facing many challenges in
the taking care of the Emil, and hence she does not have any idea how she manages the care plan
for her second child. Due to such circumstance, she is worried for her husband as he has to work
for the whole day in the supermarket along with his studies and the second child can create more
financial burden. Therefore, there is the need to assess the mental status of the patient, and for
this mental health, the examination has been employed. MSE is the most widely used test to
examine the cognitive and psychological status of the client.
The main component of the MSE are appearance and behaviour, mood, affects, thought
content, perception, judgement and insight (Srinivasan & Sembian, 2019). Looking at the
appearance of Lucinda, she appeared to be fine. Various indication related to the impairment of
mood was noticed in Lucinda as she felt lonely, anxious, frightened, worried and unhappy
because of her second pregnancy. The two-component of MSE that is found in the account of
Lucinda case are mood and affects. She was in the state of Dysphoric and showed signs of
depression. It is referred from the study of Grover and Kate (2017) that feeling of the anxiety,
lonely and upset are some of the common symptoms for the mental disorder and mood
impairment. She was in the state of the bad mood, which made her unmotivated to get out of the
bed, and she feels worse as she is not able to provide adequate care to her child. From the study

MENTAL ILLNESS
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of Gaviria et al. (2019), it is understood that women who score more than 9 in the EPDS are
suffering from depression or mental disorder. It is also evident from the case study that Lucinda
scored 12 in the Edinburgh perinatal depression, which itself proves that she is affected by
dysphoric.
It is noted that Lucinda has to drop her studies, and she is worried about her plan due to
second pregnancy; she is at the risk of developing depression which can be ensured with DSM-V
criteria. According to the criteria of DSM-V, the person with depression must show following
minimum five symptoms for more than one weeks, depressed mood, loss of interest, weight
loss/gain, insomnia, fatigue, psychomotor agitation, guilty, worthless, low concentration and
thought of suicide (Florence et al., 2015). Out of the above DSM-V criteria, Lucinda was found
to show poor interest in activities, depressed mood, guilty for being pregnant and feeling of
worthlessness. As she also felt lonely, and it is evident, it is the primary cause of fear and
anxiety, which confirms that she is at the risk of depression and dysphoric.
Answer number 2.
Stress vulnerability model is a useful model to recognize and treat relapse of the mental
illness. It is used to find the kind of stress and its impact on the life of the person concerning its
coping skills and daily social life which lead to mental illness (Ménard et al., 2017). Trauma-
informed care is a treatment framework and organizational structure that include understanding,
responding and recognize the impact of the trauma. It also takes into account the physical,
emotional and psychological safety of the client and caregiver (Raja et al., 2015). Therefore, to
assess the contributing factor for the status of mental health of Lucinda, these two models are
applied to understand the reason behind it.