Reflection: Mental Health and Social Works

Reflection: Mental Health and Social Works
Student’s Name
Institution
Reflection: Mental Health and Social Works
Week 1: History of Mental Health
The history and evolution of mental illness can be best described by focusing on the different approaches that have been employed to manage them over the past. From a historical perspective, madness, the alternative terminology for the term mental illness, can be traced back to the ancient time of the Greeks (Kirk et al., 2017). The Greek philosophers from the ancient past perceived the concept of mental illness from their respective disciplines, leading to the varied interpretation of the term madness. From a psychiatric historian’s point of view, madness was viewed as a “struggle over great unbearable elemental conflicts of life such as love, hate, jealousy, and greed and as an effort to cope with their powerful emotions of unreason” (Kirk et al., 2017 p.41).
During the colonial era all through the 18th century, mental illness transitioned from a social problem as perceived by the ancient Greeks to a medical problem. This led to the institutionalisation of the term madness and potentially triggering the adoption of management practices for mental illness. The asylums of the 19th century are an example of management facilities being regarded for moral treatment of mental disorders, alienation of the mad from the general public, and protecting them from physical punishment. Moral treatment was most applicable before the 19th century because madness was not regarded as a medical disorder (Vrklevski et al., 2017). Despite the greater success registered by the moral treatment of insanity, the need to put more emphasis on medicine arose. It was until the mid-19th century that the medical management of mental health started taking shape. It is the scientific approach that has led to the classification of the different mental health illnesses into different categories and names. The prevalence of the psychosocial and environmental causes of mental illness necessitated the adoption of a more proactive way of managing mental illness, including the psychiatric approach and the incorporation of mental health issues into the domain of social work (Bland et al., 2016).
From the observation of the historical evolution of mental illness, I can conclude that mental health is as versatile as any other social condition. Considering the transformation it has undergone over the past, both from the understanding of the core concept that defines mental illness to the management practices that have also undergone some drastic changes, it would be prudent to anticipate more dramatic evolutions with the subject matter because the rate of mental illness is not getting any better. By so doing, more efficient and proactive measures of tackling the detrimental social problem can be brought attained.
Week 2: Social Work Perspective on Mental Health
The complexity with the overall concept of mental health necessitated its perception and interpretation from diverse perspectives from social, psychological, and biological perspectives (Read et al., 2013). This paints a picture of mental health as a multi-disciplinary challenge. Mental illness is a ubiquitous endeavour, implyi...