World Mental Health Day 2008

Celebrated during the 10th of October, mental health day is an international educational campaign which aims to extend knowledge on mental health to unaware people. For the first time in 1992, it was observed by the World Federation for Mental Health as an annual activity.

Each celebration of this global event holds a theme that aims to focus the concerns of the World Federation for Mental Health on specific problems.

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For this year's theme, the organizers chose to make mental health issues a global priority, after all mental health is an international concern. It is known for a fact that not only Americans, Canadians or other highly industrialized citizens experience the problems caused by mental health. Mental disorders do not choose their victims. They occur in all cultures, in all ages and on both sexes.

The sad thing though is that there is too little attention being given in helping people with mental health. We, Americans, are lucky because our government, our health authorities and many other organizations are tying up to mobilize the causes for assisting people with mental health. However, even our current efforts are not enough. In many countries though, in fact in almost all countries in the world, mental health is being given too little concern. This is aggravated by lack of funds, by lack of facilities and by lack of nearly all the resources required to advance the causes associated with mental health.

For this year, the World Federation for Mental Health made it a point to seek everyone's concern in battling mental health. This is done through strengthening services and the participation of the citizens.

Also, WMHDAY 2008 will highlight the present needs of people with mental health and the developments of present methodologies, treatment options and management of mental health. Advocacy is the key and this year's aim is to integrate the sense of advocacy to all people so that change could be feasible. WMHDAY 2008 also advocates that solving mental health issues could also be facilitated by feeding the right information to all kinds of people by providing reliable resources.

Its time for the world to listen. Through this year's team, we could eliminate the stigma and discrimination people with mental disorders feel. Through right public information, people who don’t suffer with such disorders would understand their suffering counterparts and could help them improve their lives. And through the supply of right information for the unaware public, they could share their lives to those people with mental health disorders.

Enough for the clucking of tongues after a miserable event happened caused by, say, a mentally ill individual. Enough with the daily pains people with mental disorders experience because the public does not have sufficient knowledge on the nature of their disorders. Enough with the unjust treatment to these distressed individuals. They need help, not discrimination. Support not stigma.

We always hear it in the news. A father killed his family and killed himself after. A teenage killed his peers and turned the gun against him and killed himself afterwards. A mother killed her children and got sent to a mental institution. Why do we always have to wait for something to happen before we take action?

Why don’t we listen to the painful sufferings of the mentally ill individuals now and provide them the proper services they need and deserve? World Mental Health Day 2008 sponsors subtly the belief that the world would be a better place if only we can understand and help people with psychological disorders.
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What Effects Does Nutrition Have On Mental Health

It has been an enduring belief that nutrition plays a significant role in the state of mental health of an individual. But is this true or not?

Recent as well as previous researches have proven that nutrition (or the lack of it) does have effects on how a person's brain functions, his moods and his behaviors.

Say for example, a person who has skipped a meal is observably weak, out of focus and irritable. This case worsens when extended to a certain period of time when the person becomes severely moody and indifferent to the demands of his environment thus showing decreased speed in reaction time.

These behaviors occur due to the lack of nutrition supply to the brain. The brain requires high energy and nutrient supply. It comprises, in fact, 20% to 30% of all the energy consumption of the body during rest periods. Thus, any change in diet or nutrition level of the body directly reflects in the mental functioning.

Chronic energy deprivation, such as the case of malnourished people, results to the eventual shutting down of the body by decreasing its activities and redirecting all its energy sources towards the systems that require higher energy supply. This results to altered levels of activities, changes in hormonal levels, lessened immune system efficiency and transport of nutrients and oxygen to certain body parts, all of which could directly or indirectly influence mental health. People with extremely low nutrition are more likely to become sad, depressed and emotional as compared with those who have adequate nutrition.

Newborn babies and fetuses are also susceptible to brain damage if they are subjected to lack of necessary nutrition. The type and degree of damage is dependent on the severity of malnutrition. Also, malnutrition among babies has proven to produce low level of intelligence, cognitive defects as well as functional abnormalities.

Protein, carbohydrates, lipids and vitamins all have individual effects on the brain. Lack of supply of these necessary nutrients result to alterations in the activities of the neurotransmitters, a chemical component in the brain that transmit one nerve impulse from one nerve cell to another. Malfunctioning of the transmitters could influence a person's mood, thinking and even sleep patterns. Additionally, deficient levels of nutrition may result to nerve cell damage that could disrupt cognitive and mental functions.

Neurotransmitters are partly made of amino acids, the building block of protein. Trytophan for example, makes up the neurotransmitter serotonin. If the required amino acid is lacking, the functions of the neurotransmitter could not be executed affecting the normal functioning of the brain. In case of deficient protein consumption and failure to supply the necessary amino acid to make serotonin, the body would experience low mood and perhaps, aggression. On the other hand, diseases that could cause the build up of certain amino acids could lead to brain damage thus affecting the mental health of an individual.

Mood regulation could also be associated with the sufficient intake of dietary fats. Some studies have yielded inconclusive results on the correlation between serotonin level and intake of omega-3 fatty acids, a certain type of fat found only in white fish to stress and symptoms of bipolar disorder (a mood disorder having the representations of both mania and depression).

Directly or indirectly, nutrition has an effect on mental health. Changes in the nutritional intake of a person could lead to alterations in the mental health and vice versa.
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The Budding Disorders: Mental Health of Children

We would like to think that we have built our environments in such a way that they minimize the factors that could result to psychological and behavioral disturbances among individuals. Thus, optimizing our mental health. But statistics tell us that the majority of our population's mental health is largely subjected to negative environments.

Complications brought about by negative environment

For many children, symptoms of psychological disorders are linked to the negative stressors in the environment. In the United States alone, one in every five children suffers severe physical abuse and one in every group of five lives below the poverty line. Additionally, psychosocial structures in cities where there is poor housing expose children to violence that could detriment their mental health. (You can imagine how many children in other countries which have far lower economic status and far fewer programs for child protection are subjected to negative stressors.)

Both of the above stressors are considered as traumatic experiences to children that could resurface as psychological disorders during adulthood.

A negative or a positive environment during childhood explains why there are adults who are more likely than not to develop psychological disorders and there are those who are not affected by these at all.

For example, children who repeatedly experienced sexual trauma or sexual abuse are most likely to develop dissociative disorders such as multiple personality disorder. The rate of victimization within intimate relationships only reinforces the dissociative response. Also, repetitive exposure to violence or to the activities of a dysfunctional environment could also contribute to the development of severe dissociative disorders. These mental illnesses root from the child's effort to deny the violence, abuse, or trauma they experience as coping mechanism so as to protect his mental wellness. However, failure to completely get over these experiences would result to the impairment of his psychological wellness and even his social and emotional well-being.

Parental deprivations

Some researchers assumed that the large difference in number of psychological disorders being treated these days as compared to prevalence in the past century is largely contributed by dysfunctional family structures and parental deprivations. Indifference and neglect by familial figures, maternal-social deprivations, isolation and separation from parents are viewed as the root causes of psychological disorders such as depressions, mental retardation, psychomotor impairments and the manifestations of autistic-like behaviors among children.

Pathogenic Parent-Child Relationship

The traumatic interpersonal relationship between a parent or a parent-figure and a child is viewed as a negative environment for the child's growth and development. This relationship only means that their relationship is structured in the manner that it damages a child's psychological well-being. These give stress to certain beliefs that are psychologically unfavorable to the child such as irrational beliefs on self-blame, irrational explanations on traumatic experiences, maladaptive behaviors, unconscious guilt, shame and doubt about oneself. These beliefs are very powerful and could lead the child to over generalize negative incidents.

Children experience all sorts of negative environments including war and violence, daily stress, economic problems and accelerating negative effects of technological changes. But among these, the most aggravated is the disabling relationship he has with his immediate environment- his parents, his family and his direct interaction to his society. Above everything else, there is a need to modify these negative environments in order to develop children with better mental health and in the future, adults who can readily adapt to the stressors from their environments. …Read more >>