How much has attitude to mental health affected diagnosis and wellbeing?

How much has attitude to mental health affected diagnosis and wellbeing?

1. Primary Research

   • Survey

2. Diagnosis

   • Anorexia not being treated until people become of a low enough BMI (get worse) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33640160)
     • This would not be the same case with physical illness! If someone's blood pressure was high you wouldn't wait for it to further increase
     • "It's feeding those thoughts the illness is telling you, setting you off on that awful spiral of going home, restricting your diet and losing weight until you become more poorly." -Jo
       • Cycle of hospital admissions because treatment was based on management of weight, rather than adressing underlying mental health problem
     • Anorexia is narcissistic in culture (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35797158

3. Treatment

   • "Anti-depressants prescribed too easily, doctor says" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-35569331?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/814465c5-404b-4c88-889f-45907ba1f402/mental-health&link_location=live-reporting-story
     • This is their way of trying to cope with the overwhelming numbers of those sufering with depression. This shows how trivial 'experts' (medical drs) see depression- thinking that some pills will fix them instead of anything else and patients are simpyl dissmissed after being given these.
     • "If you ask me who's really failing people I think it's doctors like me," Dr Healy told Post Cyntaf.
       • Over-prescription could be due to not enough therapy being available as an alternative treatment to depression which is shown to be more effective. This could be due to the lack of funds present
     • Doctor of psychology thinks this about doctors (medicine)
     • "These days when people go along to their doctor, they're hoping they'll get a pill to cure an infection and they're told 'no we don't hand out antibiotics, these are tricky pills, things could go wrong (Healy presumed)
       • Mental illness treatment is based off the treatment done for physical illness
     • "But in the case of the anti-depressants it's just the opposite. These are even trickier pills likely to cause much more harm."
     • Dr Healy, director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, said doctors should not be afraid to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry.
       • Pharmaceutical industry affecting treatment
         • Experts are knocked down by the pharmaceutical company which seems to offer a qiuck and reliable fix to something
           • Pharma being dominant in the mental domain as well as physical shows just how mental illness is seen as physical illnesses' less significant broher.

4. Attitudes

   • "How does stigma affect people with mental illness? http://www.nursingtimes.net/Journals/2012/07/06/q/p/l/120710-How-does-stigma-affect-people-with-mental-illness.pdf
   • Attitudes of Mental Health Professionals Toward People With Schizophrenia and Major Depression https://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/4/709.full
     • "Psychiatrists had more negative stereotypes than the general population."
     • The study concludes that the better knowledge of mental health professionals and their support of individual rights neither entail fewer stereotypes nor enhance the willingness to closely interact with mentally ill people."
   • Tesco refused woman alcohol because of self-harm scars http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35831370