Mental Issues: Common Mental Health Problems in Australia

This essay discusses the most significant mental health issues in Australia, focusing on depression and anxiety. It explores the prevalence of these issues, their impact on individuals, and available treatment options.

Running Head: MENTAL ISSUES
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MENTAL ISSUES
Essay
Student
4/25/2019

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Mental issues
Mental issues are very common that can affect any person. Mental health issues are
commonly defined and categorised to allow professionals to refer individuals for proper care and
treatment (Clarke, Kuosmanen, & Barry, 2015). There different type of mental issues can be
raised such as depression, stress and anxiety. Mental health difficulties can cover a wide range of
illnesses, but the mutual feature is that they all disturb the exaggerated individual’s personality,
thought progressions or social connections (Deutsch et al., 2015). In this particular essay, the
most significant mental health issues in Australia and why they are significant will be discussed.
Depression has the third highest burden of all diseases in Australia (13%). Common
mental illnesses in Australians are anxiety disorders (14%), and depressive disorders (6%)
(Stockings, Degenhardt, Dobbins, Lee, Erskine, Whiteford, & Patton, 2016). Depression has
increased lifetime occurrence, estimated one in seven Australians may experience depression
issue once in their lifespan (Creedy, Sidebotham, Gamble, Pallant, & Fenwick, 2017). The
burden of this illness refers to the whole effect of an illness measured by economic cost,
mortality, morbidity and other signs. It is frequently conveyed a number of years of life lost
because of ill-health, incapacity or early death. It has also been identified that more than half of
the population affected with mental health issues do not access any type of treatment. An anxiety
disorder is a clinical condition that characterised by the persistent excessive worry (Prior, Mills,
Ross, & Teesson, 2017). This particular health might be developed due to the combinations of
aspects like genetic, environmental and personal factors. It has been found that every year nearly
1 million Australian population s experience depression and more than 2 million people have
anxiety, 1 in 14 young people from Australia aged 4 to 17 have the anxiety disorder in 2015.
Specifically in Australia anxiety related issues are develops with different other physical

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disorder, for example nearly one in four young individuals with diabetes type 2 have depression
and one in 6 with diabetes type 2 experience anxiety (Stockings et al., 2016).
Both depression and anxiety disorder become the most common and significant problems
in Australia. As the problem is continuously increasing and affecting people from all age groups.
Suicides rates have been increased in the last few years due to depressive and anxiety related
problems (Clarke, Kuosmanen, & Barry, 2015). Each day minimum of six individuals in
Australia due to suicide and an additional 30 people attempt to commit suicide. Although
suicides account for a small portion of total death, it does responsible for the greater proportion
of expiries from all causes within particular age groups. In totalling, depression holds the first
rank for causing non-fatal incapacity in Australia (23%) (Patten et al., 2016). This indicates that
on an average, individuals with depression disorder live with this incapacity for more time than
individuals suffering from other non-fatal sicknesses like hearing loss and dementia. Anxiety
associated and affective illnesses are the maximum mutual, affecting approximately 14 per cent
and 6 per cent, individually, of grown-ups each year, with around a quarter having higher than
one illness (Wiegner, Hange, Björkelund, & Ahlborg, 2015). Cooperatively denoted to as 'high
prevalence' diseases, these illnesses comprise diverse circumstances (e.g. post-traumatic stress
disease, obsessive-compulsive illness, depression, and bipolar condition) that have dissimilar
treatment necessities and outcomes. Both the depressive and anxiety disorder not only affecting
the mental health of the person also impacting their physical health. For example, the people
with stress, depression and anxiety often experience sleeplessness and nutrition imbalance. This
leads to other different health conditions like obesity, weak immunity and other health issues
(Prior, Mills, Ross, & Teesson, 2017).

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There are different types of treatments that can be helpful for depression and anxiety
disorder. The disorder can be treated by using psychological therapies, and drugs (Chisholm,
Sweeny, Sheehan, Rasmussen, Smit, Cuijpers, & Saxena, 2016). Some of the psychological
therapies that can be used are cognitive behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, and problem-
solving therapy. Cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT is helpful for the patients to learn to
manage their thoughts, reactions and behaviours to be added even and rational. Interpersonal
therapy emphasises on learning different communications strategies that can assist the patient to
express themselves better. Problem-solving therapy is effective in both depressive and anxiety
disorder as it focuses on applying the coping skills to deal with the symptoms (Wiegner, Hange,
Björkelund, & Ahlborg, 2015).
Some of the medication therapy like using antidepressants, antianxiety medications, and
mood stabilizers cane is applied for anxiety and depressive disorder. Several classes of
antidepressants can be used in these health conditions (Chukhraev, Vladimirov, Zukow,
Chukhraiyeva, & Levkovskaya, 2017). Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors or SSRIs and
Serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors or SNRIs are prescribed for the patient with
depression. These drugs are used according to the severity of symptoms. Antianxiety drugs are
used to deal with anxiety related probes. These medicines can be helpful to reduce the signs and
symptoms of anxiety but might not be helpful with each symptom of depression. Certain of these
medicines must only be sued for short term due to the risk of addiction (Creedy, Sidebotham,
Gamble, Pallant, & Fenwick, 2017). Another class of drug can be used to deal with depressive
and anxiety disorder includes mood disorder that can be sued to stabilize the patient’s mood
when the antidepressants do not work effectively. Another therapy is Hypnotherapy it is used
widely but different researches recommend that this could be an alternative for the ineffective

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therapies for depression and anxiety issues. Some of the symptoms that can be treated with this
therapy include loss of focus, reduced emotional control, and poor management of feeling
(Chisholm et al., 2017).
Mental health issues can impact the patient's ability to think and focus on a particular
task. Mental health problems affecting people from all around the world, Particularly in
Australia, depression and anxiety disorder are the two-man concerns. It has been identified that 1
in seven people in Australia develop depression, and one in 14 adolescents aged 4 to 17
experiences anxiety disorder. Both these psychological issues are affecting the majority of
Australian populations and developing other issues like suicidal thoughts, sleepless and lack of
consciousness. Some of the treatment options available for depression and anxiety include CBT,
interpersonal therapy, and drugs like SSRIs and SNRIs.

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