MENTAL HEALTH
Minding your head
OF ALL THE MEDICAL CONDITIONS MANAGED BY HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS, INCLUDING PHARMACISTS, THE MANAGEMENT AND TREATMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT.
W
hilst a large amount of knowledge and research exists regarding the
treatment of mental health conditions, improvement of the patient’s ailment often involves the use of tailored combinations of pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies, in ways which are obviously different to the treatment techniques used for most other condition groups. When these factors are coupled with the persisting taboo nature of mental health issues, it’s easy to understand that the treatment of such conditions is a majorly important area of health promotion. Unsurprisingly, pharmacists play a key role in many aspects of the treatment of mental health, from knowledge of the drugs which can assist a patient, through to signposting patients to other professionals who may be able to help them combat their condition.
WHAT ARE MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS? Before we can begin to start assisting patients with their mental health, it is important to understand as much as possible about the types of conditions that affl icted patients might be dealing with, and the various characteristics that these conditions possess which
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set them apart from others within the same disease groups.
It is also critical that we have knowledge about these conditions, as this allows for better engagement with patients, assuring them that we know about their particular ailment, rather than trying to approach all such conditions in the same way, leading to alienation of the patient.
Of course, it isn’t possible to cover each individual mental health condition within this article, but it might be useful to make use of the various resources which are mentioned throughout as tools to build your knowledge of these conditions, and to assist with your continuing professional development.
As an umbrella term (and admittedly, very simplistically speaking) mental health can be defi ned as a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well- being. From this, we can extrapolate the defi nition of mental illness as “any diagnosable illness which signifi cantly interferes with an individual‘s cognitive, emotional or social abilities”1
. Mental health conditions
can affect how a person thinks or feels about themselves, how they behave in times of stress or pressure, and
importantly, how they behave and feel in “better circumstances” – for example, we all have “down” days, but the chronic persistence of such feelings may indicate that the person affected might need to seek help.
From a very general standpoint, the symptoms associated with certain mental health conditions can be split into two main categories – “neurotic” and “psychotic” conditions. Examples of these symptoms are illustrated in Table 1. Conditions classed as being “neurotic” tend to exhibit heightened versions of normal emotional responses, whilst those classifi ed as “psychotic” can affect a person’s perception of reality2
.
Table 1. Symptoms associated with various mental health disorders. Neurotic
Psychotic
Depression Anxiety
Panic
Visual disturbances Hearing voices
Detecting non- existent smells
In a lot of cases, a person’s mental health ailment isn’t particularly clear cut, and indeed, they may exhibit characteristics of both types of condition, indicating why
mental health conditions can be particularly diffi cult to manage. However, pharmacists should prepare themselves as much as they possibly can, equipping themselves with a wide range of knowledge so that they can provide advice on all aspects of these conditions, where appropriate.
SCOTLAND’S MENTAL HEALTH It is now well known that mental health complaints are much more common than previously thought – estimates are that 1 in 4 people, regardless of nationality, will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in their lives. Additionally, depression is known to be the third leading contributor to disease worldwide, and this condition (and its related maladies) are set to become the number one leading medical complaint in medium to high income countries. However, a taboo still exists with these conditions, leading to associated shame, embarrassment and anxiety3,4
. These additional
unnecessary feelings can make the patient’s condition much worse, and as such, it is critical that these conditions are faced head on at all stages, and that emphasis is placed on educating the public about the nature of these conditions and their associated “normality”.
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