The Uniqueness of Individuals

Discuss about the Importance of Relationship in Recovery-Oriented Practice.

Sandy Jeffs is an author who has battled with schizophrenia and other problems for over thirty years. This author uses poetry to provide a visual insight into what mentally ill people go through. The author presents the facts that other than the usual problems of the disorder, the humiliation from the public is as worse as the symptoms themselves. The principles of mental health recovery outline the essential practices that practitioners should adhere to foster well-being, hope, determination and the overall recovery of mentally ill persons. This essay will be going through these principles use the poems of Saddy Jeffs to outline how these poems can help practitioners in implementing these principles.

According to (Department of Health, 2010), the first principle to be considered is the patient’s uniqueness. This principle advices care professionals to take each consumer and his or her caregivers’ as unique people with unique personalities. This principle is a call to accept that people have different values, strengths, beliefs, and goals. The work of (Slade, Amering, & Oades, 2008) takes recovery as a course where the patient’s goals, values, feelings, roles, and skills are developed. Taking from Sandy Jeffs, her uniqueness can be seen from her strengths as a poet. This is part of her skills which by encouraging and building it, Sandy Jeffs has been able to come back to life again. She can now live and compete with other poets as a normal human being. Practitioners should not see uniqueness as a challenge to their work, but they should instead take the unique characters of the person and use them to battle the disorder (Rudnick, 2012).

The commentaries of (Department of Health, 2010),  aligns with an in-depth explanation of (Thomas & Rickwood, 2015). According to (Thomas & Rickwood, 2015), recovery is a unique, deeply personal experience which involves changing the consumer’s attitudes, goals, feelings, values, skills or roles. Narrowing on this explanation, recovery happens in small installments, with consumers’ requiring prepare for trials, failures, and trying again. The work of (Thomas & Rickwood, 2015) identifies four keys of uniqueness as helping the consumer find new hope, new identity, new meaning, and the responsibilities of recovery.

The principle of real choice advices on providing the customer with all the necessary information that will allow him or her to make a viable choice or decision. This principle also includes or intellectual support that can be provided by the healthcare providers by discussing with the consumer on the hard choices. The care provider should take the clients’ tough choices into his or her own perspective and show the client that he or she understands them. On the same, (Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, 2013) advices that the mental specialists should be welcoming to the clients’ together with their ideas, and the specialist should provide them with adequate support for their future choices.

Real Choice

There is one essential rationale behind this principle. Regardless of the status of the clients, they will have to go back to their community where they will get back their rights to self-determination, somewhere away from the mental clinic or a health center. No matter how restrictive the specialist can be, the clients will go back to making choices of their lives. Rather than ignoring this fact, providing the clients with meaningful information to help them make the right choices in their life remains the practical option. The work of  (Salyers, et al., 2009) explains this concept under the idea of patient activation. Sandy Jeffs talks about a disgusting prognosis from her doctor. Instead of doctors providing a message of killing hope and determination, they should focus on helping the patient come back to life like what Sandy decided to “document the madness in poetry.”

The  (Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, 2013) talks of the principle of attitudes and rights. This rationale advices the practitioners to understand that clients have their rights. These rights include the provisions of the commercial rights and human rights documentation. Among other things, the obligations placed by this principle are to treat health clients with a respectful attitude. It is just not enough to provide treatments, but fair treatment and respect to human are part of the obligations.

Sandy Joseph states that sometimes employers do not employ ill persons just because they are mentally ill. She states that people look down on you because you’re mentally ill. They stigmatize people experiencing mental health disorders because of their illnesses. The same experience Sandy Jeffs experienced during those years is still there today. For instance, (Australian Medical Association, 2012), states that even specialists are stigmatizing mental health patients. This study of ( Mental Health Council of Australia[MHCA], 2011) also found that mental health consumers experience stigma even when they are seeking medical services. Health practitioners should understand the feelings of mental patients and start regarding them with respect. Also, this principle requires specialists to encourage the public to accommodate mentally ill patients into the society and connect them with friends and family members (Department of Health, 2010).

Another principle of mental recovery practice is dignity and respect for mentally ill patients and their carers. According, (Funk , Drew , & Baudel, 2015)dignity is ‘the integral and inalienable value for all human beings notwithstanding their social status like sex, race, color, gender, nationality, physical, mental state or any other status.’ Therefore, dignity remains the key element of humanity, psychological well-being, and social connection. The work of (Ziedonis, Larkin, & Appasani, 2016) dignity states that the principle of dignity and respect looks at the overall treatment of the patients and their carers. The guides in (Australian Medical Association, 2012)summarizes this principle by requiring the specialist to provide a welcoming environment to the consumers, an environment that is safe, supportive, listening to the consumers and facilitating their definitive recovery ambitions. Sandy Jeffs criticizes the way the public treats mentally ill people by providing various names that the public uses to define mentally ill patients.

Attitude and Human Rights

In (Ziedonis, Larkin, & Appasani, 2016), promoting dignity where mentally people are isolated requires support for the person who is already disconnected so that he or she can be able to reconnect and communicate with the community again. This work further states that dignity is an element that everyone should be allowed to exercise. The story of Sandy is a real proof that the community, clinicians, and researchers must work together and further developments and research interventions to make sure that integration of patients’ dignity remains as a core in the overall therapeutic practice. The work of (Thoits, 2011) advises that practitioners can engage other stakeholders like families, community members, educators and to enlighten them on the effects of dignity on mental recovery. The purpose of this principle together with other ethical frameworks is to protect the dignities of the patients which include justice for all.

The (Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, 2013) also mentions the principle of partnership and collaboration. This principle drives for the inclusion of the patients and the carers in the care. It simply advocates for the patient involvement.  Sandy Jeffs states that we should start supporting mentally disabled persons within the community. This would not be just about reducing stigma, but even giving the patients medicines, and helping them get meaningful jobs.

To find more about the meaning of involvement, (Tambuyzer, Pieters, & Audenhove, 2011) undertook a study for clarifying the notion of consumer involvement or partnership in mental health consumer

This study identified key unalienable elements of patient participation. The first one was their participation in matters of decision making where consumers are allowed a certain degree of responsibility and control. The next one is a vigorous character of involvement which implies a number of things such as giving them access to information, a voice, including them in the planning, evaluation, care delivery etc. There is involvement of consumers in various activities, involving them as experts through collaboration with professionals.

Lastly, there is the principle of evaluation. According to (Department of Health, 2010), evaluation principles advises practitioners to accommodate the consumer’s feedbacks for the improvement of the services. The feedback should be inclusive and not focusing on one area of care. For instance, evaluation should assess whether the treatment is up to the level that facilitates recovery. Other than the treatment, even the professionals should evaluate their conducts in engaging the patients and their family members to see whether such conducts can make patients drop the treatment or they are encouraging them to seek more treatment (Rapp & Goscha, 2011). Besides, there should be the implementation of the feedback or the suggested improvements in the practice as what Sandy suggests that we should be giving jobs and employments to the mentally ill patients, and guide them through the work.  

Conclusion

This paper aimed to explain how the lived experience of Sandy Jeffs can form a framework for health professionals to align their practices according to the recommendations documented in a national framework for recovery-oriented mental health services. By going through the stories of Sandy Jeffs, practitioners can find a real picture of what mentally ill patients go through. This paper covered the six principles as uniqueness of individuals, real choice, attitude and human rights, dignity and respect, collaboration and partnership, and evaluation

References

Mental Health Council of Australia[MHCA]. (2011). Consumer and carer experiences of stigma from mental health and other health professionals. Retrieved from https://mhaustralia.org/publication/consumer-and-carer-experiences-stigma-mental-health-and-other-health-professionals

Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council. (2013). A national framework for recovery-oriented mental health services: Guide for practitioners and providers. GUIDE FOR PRACTITIONERS AND PROVIDERS. Retrieved from https://www.mhima.org.au/pdfs/Recovery%20Framework%202013_Policy_theory.pdf

Australian Medical Association. (2012). Mental health stigma. Retrieved from https://ama.com.au/ausmed/mental-health-stigma

Department of Health. (2010). Principles of recovery oriented mental health practice. Retrieved from https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/mental-pubs-i-nongov-toc mental-pubs-i-nongov-pri

Funk , M., Drew , N., & Baudel, M. (2015). WORLDMENTALHEALTHDAY. DIGNITY IN MENTAL HEALTH. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/mental_health/world-mental-health-day/paper_wfmh_wmhd2015.pdf

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