Family Support in Mental Illness

Family Support in Mental Illness Family is an important and inevitable part of an individual and its uninterrupted presence gives us a psychological support and courage to courageously deal with any kind of trouble.It provides a strong and long lasting shelter to a person and every one looks toward his family for primary care. Although family’s role is necessary in physical illness but in psychiatric illness it has an undeniable and imperative part in treatment exercise and it is indeed one of the mental health promoting practice. So we can say that family plays an integral role in alleviating the significance of mental illness because only medical intervention is ineffective. The support of family for an individual with mental illness is crucial in Asian Indian culture. The involvement of the family is so imperative, that often it becomes a prerequisite of seeking help for psychiatric illness (Stanhope, 2002 as cited in Cook Tarnovetskaia, 2008). Studies have concluded that the rate of recovery from schizophrenia is greater and mortality of people with schizophrenia is lower in the developing world than in the developed countries and the key positive factor that bring that change is the involvement of families in the course of treatment (Warner, 2009). Let’s view this aspect in a sense that what difference it will make if family is not involved in the treatment of psychiatric illnesses in cases where people living alone without any family support during the course of their illness. Maladaptive parental behavior is associated with an increased risk in offspring for anxiety, depression, disruptive personality, and substance use disorders during late adolescence and early adulthood. (Ajit Avasthi,2010) Childhood exposure to parental verbal aggression is associated, by itself, with moderate to large effects on measures of dissociation, irritability, depression and anger-hostility.According to studies, lack of family and social relationship cause homelessness and badly effect the quality of life (Pinikahana, Happell, Hope Keks,2009). . This causes too much frustration to the patient and instead of reducing mental illness it enhances much pain and suffering to the patient. Thus it has been found that when family support is absent the severity in the mental disorder keep increasing and any sort of medication often failed to produce good result. Resultantly family support is very vital and has a big impact to a patient suffering from mental illness.. Families have valuable information and knowledge about their relatives. They also have expertise, acquired through sometimes painful experience.They know about approaches that work and those that do not. Consumers, service providers and families beneà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ t greatly when family members are involved as full partners in the care and support of people with mental health and addiction problems. When family support is not provided to an individual suffering from a mental illness, he endures a lot of setbacks and it has a direct impact on him. Mostly he confused about his parents changed behavior and feels embarrassing for being in the affected persons company. A 50 years old male patient Noor Ali Hussain was in Nizari Senior Citizen, suffering from mental illness for the last ten years. The patient has a history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and odd behavior. On clinical day, I interviewed him about his family history. He told me that his family leaves in America and they have left him in senior citizen. Moreover, he explained that his family doesn’t come to meet him, they just call him only on some special occasion. He stated that he feels happy when he talk to family and he want to live with them. However his family doesn’t take him with them to America because he is illiterate and aged.Further stated family told him that we are busy in our work no one is here to take care of you and left me in senior citizen. After carefully assessing this pathetic situation I decided to choose this topic that is family support in mental illness. In my patient multiple disorders were present and in such cases family suppor t is very important in rehabilitation and recovery of mental illness. But, in my patient case, unfortunately the family support ceased to exist. Care giving literature has illustrated that the prominent role in the provision of support for individuals with mental illness falls on family members, especially on women (Saunders 2003, Zauszniewski et al. 2008, Huang et al. 2009). Evidence linking caring for a member with mental illness to increased levels of burden for the family caregiver is compelling and consistent. Family caregivers have widely identified burden as ‘any individual whose presence and performance aroused either fear or shame must be burdensome and could not be living within a supportive environment’ (Thompson Doll 1982, p. 380). Studies have concluded that mostly people consider taking care of a mentally ill person as a burden. The family care giving burden framework best define my patient case because it distinguishes between the objective and subjective burden (Hoening and Hamilton,1996). Objective burden emerge in the form of disruption in everyday life in the household, financial constraint, breakdown in daily activities and social interaction and these are observe by the caregiver. Subjective burden are the caregivers feelings, attitude and emotions that reflects that he carries a burden(Bull, 1990; Hoening Hamilton,1966; MaurinBoyd, 1990; Reinhard, 1994). Therefore it is necessary to minimize the sense of burden felt by caregivers. Some strategies and interventions that could be help when families are involved in order to promote mental health are discussed briefly. Skilled Training and Health Management(STHM) intervention was developed with the aim of enhancing independent functioning and health care outcomes for older adults with SMI (primarily schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and bipolar disorder) (Bartels et al., 2004).moreover HM consisted of health care preventive measures to identify and monitor acute and chronic medical problems. Moreover family interventions should focus on expanding training to patient and key relatives about mental illness recovery, skills training, task sharing of household and self-care. A positive change in these areas is likely to improve the quality of life of people with mental illness and their families. Other effective strategies include discussion, debriefing session and family therapy that are good practices to involve family in care. Family therapy is also useful Psychotherapy that teaches families and their members to resolve the issue effectively and improve their understanding. According to psychiatric mental health nursing book(2006) Psychoeducation family therapy has been more successful in treatment of patient with schizophrenia and it reduces long term hospitalization as well(Dixon, 2001). According to psychiatric mental nursing book(2006),Self-help group are best position to help clients and families find additional support and information. Family support in mental illness can’t be ignored and it has a lasting role in the recovery of a mentally disorder individual. But sometime family considers burden and feels embarrassed and frustrated. In such crucial time, I think nurse can play a positive role by educating and counseling the family and his close relative about the intensity of the case and teach them strategies and skill to tackle the issue. By concluding, it can be said that family is an important source in promoting mental health but at the same time it is also necessary for the care professional to avoid commenting any mistake which may restrain the family from their beloved one who suffer from mental illness.Lastly, through assessing the identified framework and effective strategies we can play a role in alleviating the burden of mental illness that may bring a positive change in the patient who is diagnosed with mental illness. The prerequisite to promote mental health is to deal the patient holisticall y and make family involvement in treatment an integral part.

Privatization Essay -- Prisons Government Papers

Privatization In Taft, California, with a perimeter of razor wire, armed prison guards, supervise hundreds of medium security level federal inmates. Welcome to one of America's newest and fastest growing trends in the area of corrections. This new phenomenon is termed, The Corporation of Modern Corrections. Faced with an increase in prison overcrowding and aging institutions, court orders demanding immediate reform coupled with a straining budget, mandatory minimum sentences, and the public's attitude toward "getting tough on crime", America's justice system is in need of an overhaul. Thus, government leaders are ready to consider different options to help reduce the strain, while still meeting is legal responsibility to provide services. The option to emerge to the forefront is Prison Privatization - " the transfer of asset's and of production of public goods and services from government to the private sector."1 in other words, private interest is being given the opportunity to help alleviate the strain of taking care of a growing population more economically and efficiently than the government. The expansion of the private sector into the prison system began to generate considerable interest and controversy in the mid - 1980's. Currently, almost all prisons' contract some type of service from the private sector to provide support, such as, construction, medical and religious services. However, the concept of relinquishing controls of adult offenders to profit seeking companies fuels a very controversial and heated debate. Most arguments center on whether private companies can truly provide a more efficient service at a lower cost than public institutions while not sacrificing quality. While others focus on the philoso... ...hn D. The Privatization Decision, Public Ends, Private Means, New York, 1989 (INGLEWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY) Smith, Phil. Private Prison : Profits of Crime,1993 Fall Issue Covert Action Quarterly. (Internet:http://mediafilter.org/MFF/Prison.html) Logan, Charles. Prison Privatization: Objections and Refutations (Internet:http://www.ucc.uconn.edu/~wwwsoci/fraser.html) Kicenski, Karyl L. The Corporate Prison: The Production of Crime and The Sale of Discipline, 1998 (Internet:http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/kessay.html) Hunzeker, Donna. Private Cells, Public Prisoners, 1991 State Legislatures (Inglewood Library) Lemov, Penelope. Jailhouse Inc., 1993 Governing Magazine (Inglewood Library) Unknown Author. Assessing the Issue: The Pros and Cons of Prison Privatization. 1996 (Internet:wysiwyg://24/http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6465/assess.html)

Is Rosalind the Perfect Heroine? Essay

â€Å"As You Like It†, is yet another Shakespearian play that pities nature against civilisation, masculinity against femininity, idealism against cynicism, youth against age, child against parent, time against timelessness, and love against hate. It’s both a gentle, pastoral comedy of love, and a dark and sexually ambiguous comment on gender construction. Rosalind as a character is both a heroine and a portrayal of feminism. The evolution of feminine identity within a patriarchal system of power informs both the setting and characterization of this play. Rosalind dominates the play. As the audience we fully realise the complexity of her character. We understand her emotions, her subtle thoughts, and the fullness of her character that no other character in the play can match. She is successful as a knowledgeable and charming critic of herself and others â€Å"I would give him some good counsel for himself, for he seems to have the quotidian of love above him.† The definition of a heroine looked up in a dictionary is: a woman possessing heroic qualities or a woman who has performed heroic deeds. This definition can be subjective however depending on the context and the time in which the heroine’s character was portrayed. The definition of a heroine changes and evolves over time which is why what a modern audience would class a heroine characterisations is different to the definition of a heroine during the Elizabethan times. The traditional method takes the idea that all characters are real and have lives of their own. This is very different to the modern method as it is structured around the idea that characters are only functions that portray Shakespeare’s ideas. They are all part of Shakespeare’s stage craft. They reflect the bigger aspect of the play. They all have particular dramatic functions, and are set in a social and political world with particular values and beliefs. Looking at a play from a traditional approach is a more imaginative and less academic, however this does allow the audience to become involved and emotionally attached to the characters. This way of approaching a play was used in the time of Shakespeare as plays were made purely for performance. Features of a 17th century heroine differs from a modern day heroine. In the Elizabethan times, beauty, innocence, intelligence, wit and independence would have been classed as heroine qualities. A modern day heroine is thought to be a person that has strength of character, a courageous and original person. Nowadays facial features and beauty does not really count as a heroic quality. However perceptions and ideas of heroines differ from one person to another and this needs to be kept in mind. The portrayal of Rosalind is open to interpretations. It has been interpreted differently by different versions of performances and films. It has also been interpreted differently by different characters in the play. Celia sees Rosalind (Ganymede) as someone who has â€Å"misused our sex†. Other characters like phebe fall in love with (Ganymede) â€Å"I love Ganymede†. In Elizabethan times Rosalind would be viewed as a very feminine character who was at liberty when dressed as a male. This is because in the Elizabethan era, women were viewed as being weak and men as being in control and powerful. Therefore when a woman was dressed as a man she was at more liberty and could do things that she couldn’t have done if she was in form of a woman. Nowadays Rosalind can be viewed a tomboy. Rosalind is a particular favourite amongst the feminist critics, who admire her ability to subvert the limitations that the society imposes on her as a woman. With boldness and imagina tion she disguises herself as a young man for most of the play in order to woo the man she loves and instructs him in how to be a more accomplished and attentive lover, a tutorship which would not be welcome to her as a woman. â€Å"You shall never take her without her answer, unless you take her without her tongue. O that woman cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her nurse hr child herself, for she’ll breed it like a fool.† Rosalind and Celia develop into women. In the court these are inexperienced girls, yet as the comic action moves forward, they are forced to take on disguises and discover what it means to be a woman. Rosalind derives her power from her masculine disguise, and much of her humour is antifeminine. It can be said that this detracts her from being a perfect heroine. She can not exercise such power and control when being simply herself. It’s Celia who actually makes the first step into adult heterosexual womanhood. She’s angry over Rosalind’s boorish behaviour as Ganymede, Celia berates her cousin and says â€Å"we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.† As mentioned before Rosalind’s character is open to a myriad of readings. Harold Bloom describes her as a character that â€Å"is at once so accomplished in wit, and so little interested in the power that great wit can bring if properly exercised.† Completely contradicting this, Camille Paglia writes â€Å"Rosalind and Ganymede pretend to be a rakish lady killer and, at her assumption of that sexual persona, actually becomes one. She is all sex and power.† Such critical disagreements are not uncommon for plays such as â€Å"As You like It†. In my opinion both of these critics are right in what they say. However Paglia is a bit too unfair and biased. I understand her point about Rosalind being all â€Å"sex and power†, but I disagree with her saying that she’s a â€Å"radish lady killer.† In my opinion Rosalind is a character that challenges feminism. When dressed as Ganymede she portrays the thoughts of men at the time. Shakespeare uses Rosalind to put this point across. That is the fact that at the time men misrepresented and repressed women. This is quite ironic as Rosalind is herself a female and the fact that at some points during the play, she puts females down is due to the fact that she’s trying to act like a man and the men at the time had these types of approach and attitudes towards females. In my opinion she’s not acting the way she does to put women down, but to show the audience how ridiculous it is for men to behave that way towards women and to introduce dramatic irony into the play. In my opinion Rosalind is a perfect heroine, however like any character or any other human being she has fatal flows which in this case has been sheltered by her virtues of character. I completely agree with Bloom on his describing of Rosalind. He also says that she’s â€Å"harmoniously balanced and beautifully sane†, which again I consent with. However he says that Rosalind is not interested in the power that her wit brings her. I think that Rosalind as a character is well aware of the power that she has as Ganymede and the power that her wit brings her. I do also think that she’s interested in the power that being dressed as a man gives her and she enjoys using that supremacy. In my opinion Rosalind is a manipulative character (in a positive way) and can be described as a heroine in most cases. When Orlando asks her if she is a native of the forest, Rosalind makes an ambiguous remark about being as much of a native as a rabbit is to the place where it is born. Here we see how she uses her wit to protect her disguise. In other words, she never quite answers the question directly. She uses this kind of verbal sidestepping again in act V, scene2, when she says that she is in love with no woman and that she’ll marry phebe if she is going to marry any woman at all. She also makes phebe promise that if she refuses to marry her, she’ll marry silvius. Rosalind manipulates the other characters through her use of language, but she does so far one purpose and that is to ensure a happy ending to the play. In my opinion this makes her a genuine heroine. As mentioned before Rosalind subverts the typical role of women in the Elizabethan period. She has great wit and wordplay and this is subversive of Shakespeare to bequeath a female with such qualities. One of the reasons that this play would have been counted as a comedy is the fact that the audience would have found Rosalind’s courage and wit quite funny and they would not have taken it seriously. However Shakespeare would perhaps have wanted to get a very serious and important point across. Some people believe that Shakespeare was a feminist and this is the point to prove it. He could’ have chosen to endow these qualities to another male character, but he chose a female character to reflect on all of these points. Some feminists are keen to stress the utter oppression of women in Elizabethan society in all areas of life; economic, domestic, sexual, familial and personal. Whilst it is certainly true that women were in no way regarded as equal to men in official aspects of life, the plays have an important part to play as pieces of evidence as about the status of women in this period. They are not separate from their background but part of our understanding about women’s lives in this period. This plays has a strong emphasis on the importance of gender at the time and the limitations that females were under due to this. Shakespeare uses Rosalind to undermine this and to illustrate that women can be as witty as men. However significantly and in a sense ironically she is only able to show this to the audience when she is disguised as a male. She is the supreme representation of the possibilities of human personality if there is freedom and if oppression can be overcome. She also shows the p ossibilities of female ability once liberated which in Rosalind’s case is liberty in disguise. At court Rosalind’s status was lower than Celia’s, for Celia was the daughter of the ruling duke â€Å"within ten days if that thou beest found so near our public court as twenty miles, thou diest for it.† Inn the forest of Arden, Rosalind dressed as a man, has higher status and Celia’s role almost fades away. The play has been under a lot of political criticism. It is possible that Shakespeare wrote the play for political reasons. It is a play that describes character like Rosalind and Celia fleeing from the oppression and coercion that they had to deal with when they were at court. Duke Fredrick has been Associated with Queen Elizabeth for his vindictive deeds towards his own daughter and Rosalind. The play is about power and social structure. The court is seen as being the place of higher classed people, whereas the Forest of Arden is supposed to be for the undersides of the society (at the time) like women, exiles, outcasts and people in lower status. The play describes the court as being a patriarchal society and the forest as being a place of justice and equality. However we find out that this is not the case as there are wealthy landowners that enrich themselves of the poor. Phebe and Silvius are examples of these as they are shepherds that work for a rich and cruel man. This goes to show that the forest has the same hierarchy structure as the court. Shakespeare could have been trying to portray the fact that there’s always injustice in â€Å"enclosures†. The end of the play is very significant to the irony of the play. Rosalind loses her independence, autonomy and freedom when she gets married to Orlando and when she takes off Ganymede’s clothes â€Å"to you I give myself, for I am yours†. This is so ironic as after all of Rosalind’s efforts and all of Shakespeare’s efforts to portray her as a witty, intelligent character and a Feminist, she has gone back to being her old powerless self. I think that Shakespeare did this to show the audience that things like antifeminism had to be established and dealt with properly. I think that Shakespeare wanted to bring to light the fact that it wasn’t good enough that Rosalind did all the things that she did, as at the end of the day, Orlando had more power over her and he was in control and she dedicated herself to him. Shakespeare was telling the women n the audience that they would never have rights if they didn’t stick up for themselves and if they didn’t manage to get feminism established. Shakespeare transforms Rosalind’s character throughout the play. From a love struck powerless girl to a dignified, aloof woman who managed to manipulate and influence other characters like Orland (the hero) and Phebe (Ganymede’s lover). Rosalind becomes a very sardonic, scathing and witty character to show that women can be as derisive and satirical as men if they were given the opportunity to be. She fulfils a very important role and a very significant dramatic function. Then he allows her to mould back to her original, immobilized character to show that there had to be a vital change in society otherwise women are never going to get the respect that they truly deserve if the society wasn’t revolutionised and modified.

The Third Estate During the French Revolution

In early modern Europe, the Estates were a theoretical division of a countrys population, and the Third Estate referred to the mass of normal, everyday people. They played a vital role in the early days of the French Revolution, which also ended the common use of the division. The Three Estates Sometimes, in late medieval and early France, a gathering termed  an Estates General was called. This was a representative body designed to rubber-stamp the decisions of the king. It was not a parliament as the English would understand it, and it often didnt do what the monarch was hoping for, and by the late eighteenth century had fallen out of royal favor. This Estates General divided the representatives who came to it into three, and this division was often applied to French society as a whole. The First Estate was comprised of the clergy, the Second Estate the nobility, and the Third Estate everyone else. Makeup of the Estates The Third Estate was thus a vastly larger proportion of the population than the other two estates, but in the Estates General, they only had one vote, the same as the other two estates had each. Equally, the representatives who went to the Estates General werent drawn evenly across all of society: they tended to be the well to do clergy and nobles, such as the middle class. When the Estates General was called in the late 1980s, many of the Third Estates representatives were lawyers and other professionals, rather than anyone in what would be considered in socialist theory lower class. The Third Estate Makes History The Third Estate would become a very important early part of the French Revolution. In the aftermath of Frances decisive aid to the colonists in the American War of Independence, the French crown found itself in a terrible financial position. Experts on finance  came and went, but nothing was resolving the issue, and the French king accepted appeals for an Estates General to be called and for this to rubber-stamp financial reform. However, from a royal point of view, it went terribly wrong. The Estates was called, the votes were had, and representatives arrived to form the Estates General. But the dramatic inequality in voting—the Third Estate represented more people, but only had the same voting power as the clergy or the nobility—led to the Third Estate demanding more voting power, and as things developed, more rights. The king mishandled events, and so did his advisors, while members of both the clergy and the nobility went over (physically) to the Third Estate to support their demands. In 1789, this led to the creation of a new National Assembly that better represented those not part of the clergy or nobility. In turn, they also effectively started the French Revolution, which would sweep away not just the king and the old laws but the whole Estates system in favor of citizenship. The Third Estate had therefore  left a major mark on history when it effectively gained the power to dissolve itself.