Return to work:
When people return to work from any kind of illness, there is a general conception that because the individual is back then they must be cured, or at least functional. However, someone in the organisation should make it their responsibility to welcome back the recently deteriorated person who has been restored to an acceptable level of capacity and capability to operate sufficiently in the work/learning environment. The newly rendered person needs to be updated with information that pertains to their responsibilities, changes in the work environment, its structure and policies, and any other details that may be considered to be initially confusing to the stripped-back individual. Customising of the individual needs to replace any details that were erroneously deleted during the recovery process while they were absent from the primary work operations they are to be assigned to. This may be a re-assignment in keeping with the level of deterioration and restoration of the individual that was previously required.
Like an old and restored car, if someone cannot pass an emissions test, it is best to make sure they are not in a room that does not allow the other workers to freely escape from. Vocal expressions from an individual, may not be quite finalised in their adjustment to a work environment that has been influenced by its conspicuous employees. An organisation should be aware that any new or absent employee will not be up to speed on conversation within a group and they should support the returning individual for a few days with conversation. Although not advisable for the self-respecting person, hiding in a toilet cubicle could assist an assigned supervisor or mentor in discovering whether the returning individual is soliloquising safely or quietly crying. Otherwise, monitoring could include conversations and an open-door policy for help. For the social media hungry people, asking to take selfies with them might make them feel either included or less weird than the mentor/supervisor making the requests. Social acceptance, however, does not yet allow sneaking around to gather information when one might actually be caught for it.
Define the term person-centred
A person-centred approach is directed attention on an individual, which takes an holistic method of application. This means that it is not just the results or outcome and its attendant difficulties of mental ill-health that are focused on. Rather, the whole of an individual’s life and current lifestyle is considered and there are drives into achieving positive changes in the individual’s life that are made to bring about a stable position which encompass personal security, sociability, work, and any other aspects of a person’s life. Advice on debt and finance is sometimes available.
Describe the importance of a person-centred approach for mental health
People feel that they are important and are thus self-centred (self-absorbed?). When mental health assistance is given with a person-centred approach the individual is given some control over their route to wellness. If they are dragged from their dwelling kicking and shouting and railing against mistreatment they will likely rebel against any indoctrination. However, if they are gently persuaded and given the opportunity to engage in mental reassignment they will embrace the concepts and new lifestyle as being through their own decisions and actions.
Richard Thaler came up with ‘Nudge Theory’ some
years ago.
Nudge Theory is used by Governments to assist job-seekers to find
their own way back into employment. Sometimes though, the reluctant
job-seeker will find themselves on a mandatory program that extends
from the DWP work coaches’ capacities
yet gives the moaning job-seeker a chance to shape their job search
and believe they have found a job to suit them.
A person-centred approach to mental health has the same result in satisfying the individual as to the degree of control they have over their mental health recovery and how to stabilise it to attain a plateau of wellness that can be reached through differing conduits while stopping and refreshing at different platforms along the route. It is important because the journey is a voluntary one that the individual, with a travel guide, can manipulate to suit their capacity to positively change.
Explain the importance of recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations in relation to supporting the mental health of others
Managers with mental health training should follow the organisation’s policies for the reporting of mental ill-health and the support that should be given to the individual. This is important because any mishandling in this area can negatively impact on the individual, the position of the manager, and the organisation’s reputation. At this point, the manager has their own judgement and actions somewhat curtailed and a framework of assessment and action provides a guidance to the manager to alleviate the stress that the manager may experience on being responsible for support from their own, perhaps disjointed, approach. So, a good manager will have, in this way, realised the importance of recognising their own responsibilities and limitations.
Without a recognisance of limitations and an uneven or rugged approach to mental health support without following the organisation’s policies and procedures, respect and support of colleagues may be compromised and discrimination against individuals with mental ill-health may inadvertently occur. With this in mind (recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations) it is important to know how to report a mental health issue in order that safeguards can be implemented and assistance from appropriate people and services can be sought and utilised.
Identify when it may be necessary to refer to others when supporting individuals with mental ill health. Include people you may refer to.
Without a recognisance of one’s own limitations and an uneven or rugged approach to mental health support without following the organisation’s policies and procedures, respect and support of colleagues may be compromised and discrimination against individuals with mental ill-health may inadvertently occur. With this in mind (recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations) it is
important to know how to report a mental health issue in order that safeguards can be implemented and assistance from appropriate people and services can be sought and utilised.
Sometimes, mental ill-health has such control over an individual that psychosis will override the individual’s ‘normal’ perception of reality and will cause an individual to be unable to recognise their mental unruliness. In this case, this person would need to be persuaded to seek mental health adjustment services. Of course, this is not by injection, or by operant or classical conditioning (such as for Malcolm McDowell’s character in the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’, forced to watch gratuitous violence on a cinema screen while listening to music by Beethoven).
This adjustment service is peopled with helpful and understanding persons. There is still, however, a mentality of ‘Keep Calm, and Carry on’ left over from wartime Britain in the 1940s that shrouds the prevalence of anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues. This is not helped by a sway among young people to move towards an attitude that has garnered the epithet ‘Snowflake’. Used in a derogatory way, it has, by dint of having a name, become a rallying point for people who are normally reasonable and fair-minded (a name being a shortcut or code for a whole person or concept). From which elevated position, a bit advanced from their normal resting position, they pour scorn on ‘weak’ people or people who perceive, rightly or wrongly, a bruised attitude in others. Hence. there is a concerted, though not necessarily co-ordinated, retreat from having mental ill-health brought up in a ‘normal’ conversation. By ‘normal’ I mean ‘safe’, or not complicated, such as not discussing religion and politics.
Referring someone to mental health services or persons may be the appropriate action where there is a failure in the individual to perceive their mental ill-health as treatable and especially when they seem to be a threat to themselves or others, notwithstanding that young people are in this group of people because they have unprotected sex, drink too much alcohol, and drive too fast.
Referral should be made when individuals present as psychotic and are not currently seeking mental health help or being seen by mental health persons, teams, or services; or are likely to harm themselves or others, including suicide (how can we know?); and doing something that could put someone else at risk through violence or aggression – but not, apparently, when they are drinking too much at a party, having unprotected sex with their friend’s girl/boy friend, and then driving home too fast full of bravado and high self-esteem that borders on delusional, with a subsequent drop into sorrow and anxiety the next morning when they remember what they did. (Sounds like this person should be arrested for being in possession of an offensive nature who is exhibiting three counts of self-harm, likely to endanger others through violent use of a car, and signs of a bi-polar mental health condition).
When to seek help in supporting an individual with mental ill-health largely depends on whether the manager or responding person is at work or is otherwise dealing with an employee of the organisation they work for. The organisation’s policies will guide the manager accordingly. Of course, if the manager encounters someone who does not work at their place or organisation they can ignore them and get on the nearest bus to escape – or just say ‘I don’t carry any change, sorry.’, or ‘While you are living under my roof you will do as I say. Get a job!’