Mental illness is a critical health issue that needs to be handled with care and a lot of keenness. According to the Australian framework for mental illness, skilled and experienced personnel should be employed to ensure that the patients recover quickly, hence returning to a state of wellness. Although there has not been a definite meaning of recovery as far mental illness is concerned, the aim of psychiatric hospitals was to provide environmental conditions that could help mentally ill people embrace life from a positive point of view. In those institutions, qualified and educated individuals were employed to deal with such individuals and help them get back to their normal life. The ideal importance of helping the mentally ill individuals to recover from the disease I to help them enjoy the beauty of life and play their part because they are as important as the other people (Australian Department of Health, 2017).
The Australian government in collaboration either the department of health installed a recovery framework to ease the method of recovery. The deinstitutionalization was part of the framework that could help individuals suffering from mental illness recover by being directly involved communal activities. There were specific guidelines on how the patients would be treated and engaged into life depending on the level of mental illness. The framework aimed at stop the act of sending the patients from the community for isolated treatment by developing community-based treatment strategies (Taylor Salisbury, Killaspy, & King, 2016). It was observed that people attending such hospitals would take long to be incorporated back into the society. Otherwise, these programs received a lot of funding from different institutions, hence being able to acquire the resources required for every practice. This paper is aimed at critically analysing the effects of deinstitutionalization on the mental illness patients. Therefore, Australian health foundation has supported deinstitutionalization because it helps the seriously mentally ill individuals to recover quickly because of the available resources in the community (Mental Health Australia, 2017).
The shift from the existence of psychiatric hospital to the placement of community health service faced several challenges that have affected the way mental illness patients receive health service. Firstly, the patients of mental illness have always been seen as ill-minded people who should be living in protected and controlled environments (El-Missiry, 2016; Wehring & Carpenter, 2011 ). Moving these people to the community led to victimisation, rejection, stigmatisation and isolation, hence increased levels of homeless people. Some studies have correlated the increased rate of homelessness to the rising level of insecurity. The sense of insecurity is connected with the idea that mentally ill individuals would engage in criminal activities because they are not segregated or individually watched (Bhavsar, 2017). The community health service dealing with the mentally ill patients need to be equipped with skilled people, which can perfectly deal with the patients so that the program be effective. Although deinstitutionalization was aimed at integrating the patients with the society, which would lead to quick recovery, it would deviate from its purpose if the community worker were not equipped with the right skills for betterness of the patients (Allen, 2010).
Community health service has not been able to acquire skilled labour into the programs because of the unavailable funding. This issue has reduced the effectiveness of the program, hence leading to a deviation from their core purposes that is to offer mental health services. Therefore, since the patients are not offered with quality services, they end up returning to the street and continuing to suffer from the mental problems. Since the psychiatric hospitals incarcerated the patients, studies have shown that a mentally ill person has a double chance of being homeless in comparison to the former. The community health programs dedicated to providing mental health services should be strengthened to avoid cases of homelessness, which increases the rate of criminal activities in the society (Mental Health Foundation UK, 2015). The strengthening process needs financial support to employ doctors among other professionals into the community to help in managing the patients.
The movement of mental illness patients into the community also meant that different structures such as case management, health, psychiatric and educational centres would be built, but it was difficult because of the limited funds. This problem also affected the provision of mental illness services, because the community health providers could not access all the required resources (Roth, 2016). Since it has not been a successful approach to using the methodologies that were used in psychiatric hospitals, models and programs have been developed to help in implementing deinstitutionalisation. Researchers and community workers have dedicated themselves to study of different models that can help in managing and treating people with mental illness. Such research works have included trails that have involved individuals with serious mental illness (Gambini, 2016). Some models have been effective, hence being implemented into the society. Moreover, the effectiveness of the models depends on the level of mental illness, which indicates that there is a great need for doctors and other specialised individuals at the community level to boost the effectiveness of the programs (Infanzon, 2017).
Facilitating recovery of connected to several concepts that need to be combined together to transform individuals with mental illness. These components include; community involvement, personal power and control, meaningful activities and working, peer and family support, clinical care, education, stigma minimization and access to resources such as technologies that can be used in promoting recovery (Becker, Drake, & Naughton, 2007). Most of these components are available in the community but the challenge is the professional connection. Since every factor is as important as the other, each should be promoted equally towards the recovery process (Foster, Lewis, & McCloughen, 2014). Using a community setting, the mentioned components can be used in the development of a successful model that can be used successfully in treating patients with mental illness. These are some of the approaches that can be used in penetrating through the experienced challenges in the process of moving mental illness treatment into the community. Although deinstitutionalization has not been effective as it was thought, serious implementation can improve recovery rate of the patients. Also, the resources used in the treatment process for the mentally ill individuals would gradually reduce, hence making the process much affordable to all the community members.
Conclusion
The idea of deinstitutionalization of mental health care provision was initialised with the idea of making the service better to the patients. However, this shift leads to effects on the counselling profession by challenging the processing of offering the services. The challenges have prompted the community healthcare centres to work with other health centres to access ideas on how to manage their patients. Moreover, the greatest challenge has always been the sources of funding to nourish the programs. The observed failures have not been as a result of the philosophies, but due to implementation challenges that can be solved and corrected. The goal of deinstitutionalization was perfect and well designed with the idea of quickening recovery by incorporating the process into the community.
References
Allen, D. (2010). The effects of deinstitutionalization on people with mental handicaps: A Review. Mental Handicap Research, 2(1), 18-37. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-3148.1989.tb00012.x
Australian Department of Health, (2017). Department of Health | A National framework for recovery-oriented mental health services: a guide for practitioners and providers. Health.gov.au. Retrieved 8 March 2017, from https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/67D17065514CF8E8CA257C1D00017A90/$File/recovgde.pdf
Becker, D., Drake, R., & Naughton, W. (2010). Supported Employment for People with Co-Occurring Disorders. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 28(5), 332-338. https://dx.doi.org/10.2975/28.2005.332.338
Bhavsar, V. (2017). Victimisation of people with the severe mental illness. National Elf Service. Retrieved 17 March 2017, from https://www.nationalelfservice.net/populations-and-settings/crime/people-with-severe-mental-illness-are-more-likely-to-be-victims-of-violent-and-non-violent-crime/
El-Missiry, A. (2016). Victimisation of the mentally ill. European Psychiatry, 33, S447-S448. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2016.01.1627
Foster, K., Lewis, P., & McCloughen, A. (2014). Experiences of Peer Support for Children and Adolescents Whose Parents and Siblings Have Mental Illness. Journal Of Child And Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 27(2), 61-67. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12072
Gambini, O. (2016). Psychiatric disorders associated with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. Mental Illness, 8(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.4081/mi.2016.6590
Infanzon, V. (2017). Ordinary Folks Are Helping Those Who Fall Through the Cracks of Charlotte’s Mental Health System. Creative Loafing Charlotte. Retrieved 8 March 2017, from https://clclt.com/charlotte/ordinary-folks-are-helping-those-who-fall-through-the-cracks-of-charlottes-mental-health-system/Content?oid=4072795
Mental Health Australia, (2017). deinstitutionalisation. Mental Health Australia. Retrieved 8 March 2017, from https://mhaustralia.org/tags/deinstitutionalisation
Mental Health Foundation UK, (2015). Homelessness and mental health. Mental Health Foundation. Retrieved 17 March 2017, from https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/homelessness-and-mental-health
Roth, G. (2016). Perspectives from Within the Clubhouse: A Qualitative Investigation into a Peer-to-Peer Vocational Support Program for Adults with Serious Mental Illness. Journal Of Psychosocial Rehabilitation And Mental Health. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40737-016-0070-9
Taylor Salisbury, T., Killaspy, H., & King, M. (2016). An international comparison of the deinstitutionalisation of mental health care: Development and findings of the Mental Health Services Deinstitutionalisation Measure (MENDit). BMC Psychiatry, 16(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-016-0762-4
Wehring, H. & Carpenter, W. (2011). Violence and Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 37(5), 877-878. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbr094
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