Announcement: Notes for Essay 2

No Author
2014-06-30T22:45:59-06:00

Thank you everyone for your engaging essays, your mark and feedback will be released very shortly. Below are some general notes on the essay, and I will see most of your next semester for BMRI5004 Clinical Brain and Mind Sciences.

Regards,

Sean Hatton

The topic was “Using evidence from other countries, suggest strategies to improve the perception and treatment of severely mentally ill patients in Australia.” Thus, to answer the topic you needed to:

1. Identify areas that needed improvement cf. the perception and treatment of severely mentally ill patients in Australia. Everyone was able to identify problems in the Australian mental health sector – well done!

2. Identify international studies that attempted to address these areas. Most people got plenty of examples, but some people discussed Australian studies and neglected international studies.

3. Discuss the measurable outcomes of the studies. Demonstrating changes in perception would need to be measured rather than a “step in the right direction”. To get funding or influence public policy you need to back your argument with figures: “…showed a 29% decrease in in-patient admissions”. Qualitative results such as consumer testimonials are also good. Statements such as “…the study resulted in significant improvements for mentally ill people” say nothing tangible.

4. Relate those outcomes to the Australian context. Some of the best essays highlighted some of the limitations and complications that could be encountered implementing similar systems in Australia.

One paper that got top marks just concentrated on two problem areas and related several international studies to these situations. It was simply structured and understood, backed by meaningful data, and stayed on topic.

Please, please, please use a citation manager like EndNote. It is free to students and the library regularly provides training.

There were some problems with inline referencing “The (Song et al., 2005) study” should be “The Song et al. study (2005)”. This can be tricky to automate in EndNote - when you have finished the essay and formatted the bibliography ensure that you clean up any special inline referencing manually.

Words like Depression, Bipolar and Schizophrenia should not be capitalized (unless the beginning of a sentence).

Do not write in the first person “I will now focus on….”

Some of the themes cover in this essay include, and were not limited to:

Community treatment orders - CTO

Movement from institutionalisation to community care = social exclusion.

Portrayal of mentally ill in films and news.

Interpretation of mental illness within a socio-cultural environment

Linguistic and cultural barriers complicating access to mental health services within multicultural Australia.

Care of maternal psychiatric disorders – Mother-Baby units (MBU)

Holistic care of health – metabolic risk factors for antipsychoic medication.

Treatment adherence through long-acting injectable antipsychotics.

Perception of mentally ill patients by health professionals.

Consumer perspectives which are an important aspect of health service delivery and education.

Stigmatizing effect of diagnosis (schizophrenia), language (psychotic) and treatments (electroconvulsion therapy).

Addressing self-stigmatization.

The deviant status (schizophrenia) overshadowing other statues (e.g. parent, worker).

Upskilling GPs to address psychiatric disorders in the general clinic, Better Access scheme etc.

Religious and cultural stigmatism – eg. Possessed, evil spirits, revenge for past deeds and sins etc.

Carer burden.

MindMatters (school program)

Individual placement and support (IPS) vocational services.

“Open employment” and equity to employment.

Rural Outreach, Advocacy and Direct Services (ROADS) and Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) for rural settings

Active Community Treatment (ATC)

Hospital at Home (HAH) services

Early intervention programs (headspace, EPPIC, beyondblue)

eHealth services

Full-Service Partnerships for the Australian homeless.

“Bavarian Anti-Stigma Action” (BASTA), “Open the Doors” program

Ticket to Work Act.

Responsive Advocacy for Life and Learning in Youth (RALLY)

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines.