Diversity in the Country’s Population and Mental Health

Australia is a multicultural country where diversity is the primary essence of the culture of the country. Population of this country belongs to different background, ethnicity, and race and inclusive of indigenous, nonindigenous as well as immigrant populations (McGorry et al., 2014). Therefore, the health related needs of people of this country properly reflects the composition of its population and also reflects the issues faced the different stakeholders of healthcare society (Xiang et al., 2012). As the range of mental illness affecting the Australian population is increasing and including anxiety, depression, suicide, and schizophrenia, the thought and view of people regarding mental health and associated challenges are changing. Mental illness is a major issue in Australian continent as per the statistic collected from the Australian bureau of statistics (2017) the rate of mentally ill patient in Australia was 20% within which majority of them were not provided with appropriate mental healthcare so that their critical care could be obtained (Meurk et al., 2016). The rate of mentally ill patient admitted in acute healthcare facilities are increasing constantly as the mental healthcare facilities are unable to provide acute and critical care to patients affected with mental illness (Xiang et al., 2012).

This issue creates a lack in healthcare system due to which healthcare system become unable to provide care to both mentally ill patients or to acute care or critically ill patients. Therefore, there should be service plan that should understand the need of changing or decreasing the hospital beds for mentally ill patients from acute care and make the mental care facilities appropriate for their critical health needs (Storm, M., & Edwards, 2014). This assignment therefore, will provide the detailed analysis of three challenges of the mental healthcare facility and will discuss the need of decreasing the bed for mentally ill patients from the acute healthcare facilities so that those beds can be utilized for severely ill patients. For this purpose, planning tools such as SWOT analysis will be carried out in the assignment. This paper sets to understand and critically analyze the mental healthcare system and how a strategic plan of how a reduction of admission to the hospice especially to the psychological department.

As the Australian healthcare service is going through a healthcare reform, it requires the crucial support from its employees to take part in the reform and management of the healthcare system (Meurk et al., 2016). Further, it is their full scope of practice that helps in the improvement and enhancement of the healthcare facilities for mentally ill people. However, in the process, there are several challenges which is faced by the mental healthcare facilities due to its accessibility and reach has been decreased (Barnett et al., 2012).  These challenges also increasing due to social, mental and economic aspect of the Australian society. Hence, analyzing each these factors it could be stated that mental healthcare services are facing these issues due to the lack of governmental funding, social stigma, and the state of play and lack of plan of care as well as patient centered care for patients with mental illness (Meurk et al., 2016).

Challenges Faced by Mental Healthcare Facilities

However these challenges which has been highlighted in the section could be fulfilled if the government and healthcare facilities utilize appropriate plan for the identification and solving of these challenges (McGorry et al., 2014). However, due to these challenges the aspects which can change the aspects of mental healthcare’s effectiveness gets influenced and hampers the quality of healthcare quality.  Therefore, keeping this in mind, the healthcare challenges affecting the mental healthcare system can be decided in two sections, economic, and social (Xiang et al., 2012).

The first challenge the mental healthcare is facing is the economic challenge due to which the health café facilities as well as the patients have to suffer. There are evidences form researches and governmental data that determined that mental healthcare facilities are not been able to provide proper economic support so that they can deliver chronic healthcare facilities to people who are presented with mental illness and is suffering from any acute healthcare situation (Storm & Edwards, 2013). Though the mental healthcare policy determine that this is an integrated part of the healthcare process but the funding process and the amount which is provided to them is quite less than that of the other healthcare facilities in the country and hence, the system suffers from quality and service related issues mentioned in the research of Giacco, Matanov & Priebe (2013). Whiteford et al. (2013) mentions that if the mental healthcare facilities are provided with similar funding and support to that of the public and private healthcare facilities for acute healthcare facilities, they would have helped major number of people affected with mental illness and then treated their acute health situation. As the healthcare facilities treating acute healthcare have limited number of bed in which they can admit severely ill or injured people, admitting a patient with mental illness in those facilities should affect the care process. Hence, Scott et al. (2012) suggests that the mental healthcare facilities should provide acute care to the patient who are primarily mentally ill and secondarily presented with acute condition, who provide the opportunity to provide acuter care to other patient who is critically ill and needs healthcare assistance of acute healthcare professional (Storm & Edwards, 2013). Therefore, the funding system has been named as a challenge to the mental healthcare system as due to lack or loopholes in the policies related to the funding distribution, they are unable to upgrade their facility to acute healthcare inclusion, leading to admitting acute mentally ill patients in the acute healthcare facility (McGorry et al., 2014).

The objectives to overcome these challenges will be according to the extent and efficacy of the challenge to affect the healthcare facility. The goals decided to overcome this challenge are:

• The first thing which could be done to overcome the challenge is to be done by the healthcare facilities by providing a detailed analysis of their healthcare facility and their ability to deal with such critical or acute healthcare conditions. This will help the government to understand the need of mental healthcare facilities in making them efficient in caring for people with mental illness and acute health condition and they will be able to provide governmental aid so that the condition of the healthcare facility could be improved (Meurk et al., 2016).
• The second intervention which will be used will be associated with the healthcare professionals training and upgradation. It is an important aspect as providing training and improving the skills of mental healthcare professionals will help the patients to achieve acute care treatment in the mental healthcare organization. Therefore, in this situation, training is an important aspect using which the issues of mental healthcare could be resolved (Brian & Ben-Zeev, 2014).

In the following section, the SWOT analysis of the strategies or objectives will be determined. SWOT is comprised of four aspect of any situation, including strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and using these four aspects it helps to provide a complete analysis of the system.

The strength of this strategy will be that the governmental facilities will be able to know about the need and lack in the mental healthcare facility of Australia and hence, they will be able to change the policy in a way so that funding can be evenly distributed in the mental healthcare facilities of Australia. Further, the objectives were feasible and as per the government policies, the healthcare facilities are provided with right so that they can apply for nay facility and valid aid they require to provide quality health throughout the country.

Economic and Social Challenges Affecting Mental Healthcare

Providing training and educational sessions to the mental healthcare professionals about acute care will not help them with acute healthcare strategist as they do not have those facilities, making the process inefficient on helping people.

Government will be able to provide the mental healthcare facilities with opportunities so that they can implement the new technologies and strategies in helping people with mental illness and then help them to upgrade their ability in helping mentally ill patients with acute healthcare interventions.

However, there are several threats such as competition in healthcare facilities, inability of the healthcare facilities in implementing the newer strategies for the process. These threats will also affect the healthcare facilities in providing socially and economic competence care to the facilities.

There are a wide range of social challenges associated with mental health nursing practices in Australia. Mental health patients are perceived in a stigmatized manner by the society. This is primarily on account of the lack of awareness and competence to deal efficiently with the mental health patients (Ashby et al., 2013). According to scientific evidences it has been observed that a major proportion of the mental health patients are sent to the acute care department (Dingle et al., 2013). This is primarily because of the lack of beds in the mental health hospitals. The patients that are referred in the acute care unit are often perceived in a stigmatized manner by the professionals who manage the acute care department. Further, it has also been noted that on account of the stigmatized behaviour of the professionals, it has been reported that the mental health patients often feel uncomfortable and hesitate to be treated in the acute care department. In addition to the mentioned fact above, it has also been seen that the nursing professionals in charge of taking care of the mentally ill patients are unable to deliver quality care. The professionals often fail to engage with the clients in a positive therapeutic relationship and this leads to the cause of inconvenience in the patients (WHO, 2014). Hence, with respect to the current scenario, it can be suggested that the mental health patients must be taken care of with utmost care and sensitivity. It can also be said that instead of transferring the serious patients to acute care, the health care system can be evolved in a manner that it is facilitated with the provision of mental health care service. This would help in providing critical care to the patients and at the same time would also help in delivering an effective form of treatment. Further, it should also be noted that the mental health care department would be looked after by trained professionals who would exclusively be in charge of handling mental health patients. This would help in building an effective therapeutic patient-centred relationship and would also elevate the quality of the services offered. Further, it would also help in attaining positive patient outcomes and increase the level of patient satisfaction. The patients would also feel that they are under the care of competent professionals and this would help in addressing the social stigmatized beliefs associated with mental health patients adequately.

Proposed Strategies and SWOT Analysis

In order to combat the social issues associated with the problems of mental health it is extremely important to proceed with well-defined objectives so as to adequately address the stigmatized perception of the society. To address the issue the following two objectives have been proposed in the paper along with the rational’

The first objective would include the renovation and improvement of the medical infrastructure within the mental health department so as to provide quality services to the patients

The second objective would include the recruitment of trained professionals who are trained in terms of cultural competence and have the ability to provide care in accordance to the ethical guidelines.

The rationale behind the designed objectives can be explained in a two-fold manner. In the first case, the first objective would help in dealing with the hospital bed crisis issue within the acute care department. It is important to note here that saving a bed within the acute care would help in getting a patient treated who has been diagnosed with a physical health disorder. Also, the renovation of the mental health department in terms of including facilities and bed would make sure that the mental health patients are treated in a proper manner within the concerned department.

The second objective would help in ensuring that the care givers engaged in the mental health department to provide care to the patients are appropriately trained. This would further assist the professionals in being able to build a patient-centred therapeutic relationship which pivotal while caring for mental health patients (Christensen & Petrie, 2013). At the same time it should also be noted that on successful designing of strategies to achieve the objectives, it would ensure positive patient outcome and help in combating the issue related to hospital bed crisis.

The strengths of the designed objectives can be explained as the feasibility of the rationale behind the designed objectives. It should be critically noted here that the hospital bed crisis is a serious problem and it must be addressed immediately. The mental health care patients can easily be treated with greater efficiency within the mental health department (Brownson, 2017). This would not only help in resolving the hospital bed crisis but would also help in providing the mental health patients with quality care.

The weakness of the designed policies can be explained as the lack of hospital funds to arrange sufficient training for the nursing professionals to engage in patient-centred therapeutic relationship (Morgan et al., 2013). Further, it should also be noted that the lack of funds serve as a major hurdle in the process of incorporating infrastructural improvement so as to make the patient experience a better one.

The opportunities would comprise of the successful implementation of the designed policies. It would provide a positive environment for the training professionals to assimilate ample knowledge in the field of ethical considerations and professional nursing principles so as to help in improving the quality of services offered to the mental health patients. In addition to this it would also help in the reduction of the societal stigma associated with mental helath nursing.

It should be critically noted here that Australia is a diverse land that hosts a major proportion of multi-linguistic people (Badland et al., 2014). The feasibility of the implementation of the planned objectives would strongly depend on the ability of the professionals to comply successfully with the ethical standards and at the same time deliver patient-centred therapeutic relationship. In light of the existing scenario, it should be noted that it would take a considerable amount of time to successfully implement the designed objectives and attain positive outcome.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it should be discussed that diversity is an integral part of Australian society that decides each aspect, its nature, its availability in Australian society. Healthcare also gets affected due to the multicultural and diverse Australian society and various people are presented with various health concerns. Due to this, mental healthcare and acute healthcare facilities varies completely from one another. In this assignment, challenges which creates such gap between acute healthcare and mental healthcare has been discussed and the objectives to overcome such challenges has been proposed so that it can help those mental healthcare organizations to overcome the challenges and upgrade the system to help mentally ill people to overcome their mental acute challenges. Further, it also helped the patients to avail acute healthcare interventions to maintain their health status. Finally, a detailed SWOT analysis of the objectives were provided in the assignment to determine its effectiveness in maintaining  mental healthcare related needs in Australia.

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