Work
Intro
Mental health is described by The World Health Organisation (WHO) as “our cognitive and emotional well-being. It is about how we think, feel and behave. When a person realizes their own abilities and can cope with normal stressors of life’ (WHO).
When trying to define mental illness, it becomes a much more complex process. The confusion is evident in the different terminology that is used to describe mental illness, for example, mental health, mental disorder and mental distress (Coppock and Dunn, 2010). This complexity stems from the different perspectives about the causes of mental illness. Views held by medical practitioners and psychologists tend to be focused on what is referred to as the medical model. This essentially concentrates on the genetic, physiological and biomedical causes, often viewing it in the same light as a physical illness. Suggesting that pharmacological and physical intervention in clinical settings is the most effective way to treat and diagnose mental illness (Cambell and Davison, 2012). Social workers tend to focus more on the social model, when working with service users, this looks at the wider social causes of mental illness, and the impact of society on having and living with a mental illness (Lester and Glasby, 2006).
The medical
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This then impacts on how the labeled person thinks and what they expect of themselves, usually accepting a labeled diagnosis and fulfilling the negative label assigned to them. Therefore mental illness from this perspective is seen as an ascribed status, labelling a mental illness is a convenient way of defining problematic issues related to daily living (Golightlley, 2011). A social constructive perspective perceives mental illness as a social role, not constructed by the individual but within the system (Karban,