Reflection Assignment
Section A
Task 1
With the increase in living standards and health problems, there are many national and international health trends going on that impact the lives of individuals in one way or another. Many health-related problems are the main concern for every individual but they are ignoring them for the sake of their livelihood. They are lack of physical activity, nutrition in the body, overweight and obesity, consumption of tobacco and pan regularly, HIV and AIDS, mental health, injury and violence, environmental quality et cetera. Out of all these, mental health is the most important health problem which is often ignored and not talked about or discussed. Individuals and people are struggling with mental health and they are not discussing it with anyone or not even talking with anyone. People keep it a secret and do not let it out.
But I feel people should often talk about their mental health and problem because somehow it affects their quality of life and also their work life. They are not happy in their own life and not even enjoying their life they are just pretending o be happy mental health is not age-restricted, it can occur at any age to anyone without giving any signs or symptoms. Individuals start to get irritated from the smallest of things which they loved once and start to shout at one another or sometimes some people go silent and start to love in seclusion. If the person will talk he or she will feel free and stressed out. Almost 3 out of every 5 people are suffering from mental health worldwide which is not a good sign and indication of growing and evolving as a human being.
Task 2
Mental health can affect any individual at any stage of their life. In human life, there are roughly six phases, infancy, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age, and late adulthood. Mental health affects the child when the parenting is not done very well by both mother and father. The parents who are suffering from mental health their children also suffer from these problems. Prenatal mental health problems can also induce mental health problems in the child. Later on, in life school plays a great role in affecting the mental health of the child. The surrounding, teachers, and classmates play a vital role. If teachers and students bully the child then the child may be the victim of mental health problems. Later on, in adolescent age, the survey shows boys shoes high cases of behavioural problems whereas girls show emotional problems. In this phase, family plays a great role in keeping them on track rather than indulging in mental health issues. Early adulthood shows high cases of mental problems approximately 75% of individuals face this. The individuals of these age groups are reported to have suicidal thoughts. And if all these mental health problems are not stopped by this time then the individual can onset the first step of psychosis. Later on in life after 30 years of age, diseases can be the main reason behind mental health and especially family, financial and job problem. People suffer very hard that they end up being in the asylum or to a psychiatrist in the end. In the end phase of life, people struggle with the feeling of loneliness and isolation that leads them to case mental illness. Various biological and chemical imbalance also contributes to mental illness. And various past incidents and experiences trigger the trauma which sometimes takes away the life of a person.
Task 3
Section B
Task 1
Peter is an old project manager who once enjoyed working as a carpenter. Now as he was promoted, he is not happy with whatever business he has and is always in the worry about what will happen to his business or not. If we approach Mr Peter from the deficit point then we tend to show him that worrying about all these things puts him at greater risk and inadvertently affects his life by having different diseases and mental illnesses and will make him an insomniac. Moreover, he is divorced so he should take out time for himself and her daughters from his busy schedule hours.
And if we approach peter from the abundance point, he should be well aware of the resources he has and the opportunities he has to overcome his problems. Just because he is financially stable he can take out her daughters on a weekend trip. In this way, he will take a holiday and feel fresh and will get the time to be away from his business and monotonous life routine. The abundance approach will lead to a positive path and strive for better excellence in life.
An abundance mindset is very important in life it will help in recognizing the power you have upon your thoughts by giving time to whatever thoughts are going in or out of the mind. Focus on whatever you have in life instead of focusing on what you don't have in life because if we look at what we have in life we will always have more but if we focus on later things we will never have enough. And Peter must learn this thing that whatever he has he should be grateful for that instead of worrying about more or the problems.
Task 2
Positive psychology tools are significantly important in the life of ordinary people because people tend to focus on the negative side of life instead of focusing on the positive part. Positive focus on life can enhance their quality of living life and more happening, fulfilling and promising. There are many tools which help in living life easily such as writing about positive experiences of your life. Whenever we write about the positive experiences which happened to us in life and the happy moments shared with our family or friends it will enhance and uplift the mood.
Moreover, we can indulge people in doing enjoyable, meaningful and important activities. When people indulge in such type of activities they feel overwhelmed which give them a sense of happiness. Also, by the help of exploring their strengths from their own experiences, we can help people in finding meaning and value. Strength-based stories help people in finding their strengths and will further help them in achieving their desired goals and will develop a sense of meaning and fulfilment in their life.
Furthermore, we need to show people how feelings, emotions and positive thoughts lead their lives. Also, we can take the help of the PERMA model which helps in achieving a satisfactory and happy life. PERMA model shows five elements of happiness. It stands for:
P- Positive emotion
E- Engagement
R- Relationships
M- Meaning
A- Accomplishments
It is natural for individuals to seek out a way to make life happy and satisfactory. Martin Seligman, who is the American psychologist who designed this model believed that to achieve a healthy life and get satisfaction in life this model will be helpful. Simply greeting and appreciating a person in his life adds happiness to life.
Task 3
The five highest strengths in my life are honesty, kindness, Love, Humour, and Love of learning. All these strengths are very important to me in all aspects of my life. It helps me in every step of life. Speaking truth in all aspects of life is very necessary for me. It helps me in presenting myself more genuinely and sincerely. It gives me the courage to do more work and face the harsh realities of life which are very difficult at some stages of life. It helps in taking responsibility for one's feelings and responsibility.
Since my childhood, I am very kind to others and it gives me a different sense of happiness when I help someone and do favours and take care of them when they are in need. Giving value to close and loved ones is a form of showing love to them. Moreover, I am very good at my sense of humour. I love to laugh and tease people and bring smiles and happiness to people's life. I feel happiness from inside when I make other people smile and happy. My love of learning is the most important strength in my life.
I love learning new skills and to implement them in my life. I love learning new skills, activities, hobbies and knowledge in any way. I think increasing knowledge in every aspect of life is quite important and it will help in making us better and good people. I use all my strengths including these highest strengths in my workplace or at university and sometimes if I do not use them regularly I try to remedy this and inculcate it in my routine by talking myself that we need to be a better person.
Section C
Task 1
Emotional Resilience means the ability to give response to stressful conditions or unexpected situations. Amira since her childhood has seen those terrible things which stick in her mind like glue. The loud sound or banging sound creates the image and sound of bombs which were bombarded her apartment when she was in Syria. Moreover, as a child, she lost her younger brother who was killed in that blast. And later on, her father is not in good condition and it is difficult for them to leave their own country and shift to a new country but nothing left with them and they had to start everything from zero. All these childhood memories traumatize them in her head and make her weak from the inside and affect her mental and physical health conditions. Amira has problems concentrating on her current ongoing life and re-experiencing past related things.
The school and Amira's parents can play a vital role in overcoming her condition of Amira. The parents of Amira can talk to Amira about all the things which happened to them. Moreover, they should be with her in every condition she is facing related to mental health or regularly check upon her with whom she is sharing her thoughts. Her parents should give her proper therapy and mediation session. Furthermore, they should indulge her in activities that make her genuinely happy and help her in overcoming those traumas. In school, the faculties should avoid talking about her past incidences and should convince her to take part in extracurricular activities and sports activities. The teacher should take care that her friend circle should be helpful to her and keep her cheerful instead of involving and restricting her in her thoughts. Both of them should make Amira understand to make the past incidents her strengths instead of making them her weakness.
Task 2
The emotional resilience toolkit is made with the help of the Department of health to provide more information on promoting the emotional and personal resilience of the employees. It is made for companies which can be from small to large size. It gives various examples and shows how even small cases can create a bigger problem in the life of an individual and can cost a significant impact. It also shows why a company should invest in the health of its employees and their mental well being for increasing productivity and workforce. Inadvertently, the company plays a role in creating emotional resilience.
This new approach of making a toolkit aims to enhance the growth and productivity of the company. The members who made this toolkit emphasis on the influence of external factors on the adaptability of the employees. The team believes that external issues such as family problems, child care, depression and anxiety triggered the problem and have an impact on well being and behaviour at work. Work-related stress is the main problem behind emotional resilience. The excessive pressure and type of demand placed at work affect the mental well being of an individual.
For overcoming emotional resilience at work, employees can create a pleasant environment in the workplace by healthy eating, doing physical activity, by avoidance of drug-related misuse, sensible drinking and creating a psychological work environment by giving employment security, fair treatment, the balance between efforts and rewards along with promoting communication gap among the employees and employers by making healthy relationship, making supportive networks et cetera. Also, they can provide interventions to manage mental health-related issues such as employee assistance programs, physical activities and counselling sessions for the needy ones.
Task 3
Resilience is showing the highest level of performance and a positive environment at work. Resilient individuals show great performance in their adverse conditions too and can adjust easily to any environment. According to the resilience report, I am confident, adaptable and provide social supports which are the main key components of being resilient. According to the report, I work out smoothly even in stressful and panic situations and make ourselves strong enough so that no one can break me in the course. Moreover, I adapt very easily as a person in any age group or people in any place. Quick and sudden change cannot even hinder my performance which is quite a shock to me because till now I was unaware of this fact. I cope very easily in a new environment.
Supporting others which are also is a main key component of resilience is profoundly in me. I always try to build a strong and good relationship with others and help them with their needs and also seek support whenever required. Furthermore, I have very clear sense of purpose in my life and also in my career goals. I always follow the path which led me to fulfil my dreams and goals and believe in taking each and everyone with me.
I am very bad at dealing with stress because of my overthinking problem. Though, I handle pressure very well at the workplace. Sometimes, I became modest when there is a low phase in my life but later on, I cheer up myself and show myself a mirror that whatever I have is great at those things and no one can snatch those things from me. Furthermore, I am very confident in my capability and resourcefulness and a dislike of conflict can never undermine my self-confidence.
Section D
Task 2
Prenatal women's health care is very important in the life of every woman. It is the most important phase of a women's life when she is in the process of giving birth to a new life and struggles for nine months by keeping it inside her body. Prenatal mental health problems are prolonged in the life of any woman and can result in everlasting mental health problems. Moreover, along with the mother, this prenatal mental health problem can affect the growth and mind of the child also which is growing inside the uterus of the mother. There are numerous ways of treating prenatal mental illness and it starts with giving a happy, positive environment to the women and also by giving proper rest and peace to the mind and body. There are many stigmas in many of the families in which women hesitated to talk about all these things which created adverse effects on their own life along with the effect on the mind of the child also. There should not be any discrimination in getting help from the doctors and nurses based on colour and caste and also if they are highly educated or not.
Nowadays, many cultural awareness programs are held in many places related to prenatal mental health problems. The lack of time, and involvement in the household chores and doing each and everything does not give time to the women to think or speak about themselves which leads affects their health as well as mental problems and creates many problems. Women should be made aware that if they will not take care of their mental health during this period or phase of their life it will create many more problems for them in future life and they will become the victim of many unnamed diseases too.
Section E
Task 1
According to the case study, Joe was a good student but suddenly he starts to live in seclusion and avoid his friends and family members and even had hallucinations of things which not even exist in the first place. Joe took the help of doctors and nurses and provides him with mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness exercise is not such a big deal in simple terms, it is giving relaxation to your mind from the monotonous routines of life and work. It is simply, straightening up the back and taking a deep breath for a while in a quiet environment. It relaxes the mind and the body and provides instant relief. Many treatments are there for serious issues.
There are proper ten to twelve sessions for mindfulness which provides great relief to psychotic patients and shows great results in the end which further helps in recovering the patients.
The session starts with a raisin exercise in which a raisin is given to the patient and a few questions are asked related to that raisin. In the next session, there is a proper scanning of the whole body which provides great relief. The next session is mindful sleeping which is placed in a beautiful and quiet area with beautiful scenery. The next session is mindful listening; it helps in relaxing the mind by listening to slow music which provides relief and makes the concentration on one thing. Another one is accepting the feelings and thoughts instead of removing them from the mind. Acceptance takes more time but it is permanent. Moreover, accepting the social or surrounding anxiety which is very important.
Task 2
Mindfulness is the meditation practice and it includes observing the little changes and reactions in their surroundings. As per my understanding, the mindfulness tools are based on meditation practices all these practices are used for the treatment of psychosis. According to Paul Chadwick, this therapy is used for the last decade. The article, explains the rational approach to the use of these mindfulness tools for treating mental health issues.
This article highlights the importance of using mindfulness tools for treating psychosis by using different meditation techniques. I have learned that the use of mindfulness helps to reduce the distress of the patient. Similarly, the use of internal and external personal mental issues can be resolved by using meditation-based practices. Medication based therapy can be substituted by using mindfulness tools based therapy.
There are some methods are mentioned in the article to treat psychosis such as using small time-based meditation techniques to avoid distressing voices, paranoia, hallucinations, et cetera kind of mental health problems. For example, 10 min of mediation practice with timely instructions based every 30 to 60 seconds.
According to me, this article explains that the use of mindfulness tools is safe and beneficial to treat psychosis. However, one thing that is clearly described in the article is that this therapy does not aim to reduce or eliminate psychosis problems. There are some pieces of evidence are expressed in the article that pilot projects conducted in the UK show better outcomes of this therapy.
Finally, I believe that making use of this therapy would help to treat psychosis. Mindfulness tools practices are providing good outcomes for those who are surviving mental health traumas. Running mindfulness groups to get more treatments for psychosis groups more research would be needed to enhance & encourage using of meditation practices for such mental health treatments.
