Continuing with the series on how I answered the questions for a level 3 certificate on Mental Health and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace by attempting to use the null hypothesis to prove the positive hypothesis (or not).
In my answer for the certificate there is a lot of my actual attempt to be serious, (we cannot jest about support for people with mental ill-health). My contribution was dry and lengthy, so I have excluded it. I will post it if anyone wants to see it.
Moving on:
Under
the Equality Act 2010 an employer or service provider has
a responsibility to consider how the individual can be best placed in
the work-force and ergonomics need to be assessed accordingly, in
order for the individual to continue in work or be a recipient of a
service. This Act really applies to disability, which as an umbrella
term, includes long-term mental ill-health.
Hope and
recovery:
In
1958, Marie Jahoda suggested that there were six criteria that needed
to be fulfilled for ideal mental health. Of course, this was also a
time when calisthenics was ‘The’ exercise and women were
subjugated, either by their own beliefs, or by men who believed that
women only had a specific role, or more likely, by both through
indoctrination. However, Marie Jahoda seems to have recognised both a
woman’s plight and mental ill-health, with the following criteria
for mental well-being:
Positive
attitude towards the self
Self-actualisation
Autonomy
Resistance
to stress
Environmental
mastery
Accurate
perception of reality
Available at: https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/deviation-from-ideal-mental-health
Accessed: in 2022 and 06th October 2024
These
criteria are uni-sexually applied.
Of
course, there are various theories of what constitutes ‘normality’
and not everyone has sat down to examine their own ideas and tested
for any validity to their thoughts.
When
one considers that some people with
mental ill-health are
guided towards mental stability and mental health by people who have
their own ideas on
normality, or are
enacting an ill-conceived theory of mental wellness, one cannot help
but to imagine those
saviour men
and women kicking down doors in residential
buildings and forcefully removing any
people thinking
fresh ideas or innovative thoughts so
they can be
re-indoctrinated with the Party-line; because the neighbours have
noticed a smell of air-freshener, or
lemons emanating from
behind the
‘diseased’ person’s freshly
painted front door that is a different colour to all their
neighbours’ front doors. While
that is vivid in our minds, we should imagine it to be a portrayal of
how, lots of mentally unwell people see interference in their lives from
well-meaning others. ‘Please negotiate with the hostage-taker, I am
not in control of the situation. If
you will not negotiate with the hostage taker, then leave me alone so I can’. Of course,
we should be mindful of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ if the hostage
negotiates with the hostage-taker.
Many
people have an IQ that is far beyond the average score of 100. An IQ
of 130 is as different to the average of 100, as the difference of 70
(the IQ of a dog) is to 100. This of course, simply by a considered
guess, means that because people with an IQ of 100 are able to
survive with social assistance freely available to them, we should
not be fooled into understanding that 100 is not enough. It, most certainly IS enough. However,
there are people with IQs of 70 who need constant, round the clock,
human care to survive.
When my doctor tells me to socialise more, I
wonder what she is trying to achieve; should I get a dog?
There
was once a man who received a telephone
call from a recruitment consultant who spoke about a role in the NHS.
The job-seeker explained that tensions in the NHS would not allow him
to make any inroads into having any conversation about the NHS
without falling into one of two camps – striking for more pay is
good, and striking is wrong for all care positions. He explained that
the catch-all ‘If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the
kitchen’ works well for him as an heuristic. The recruitment
consultant asked if the jobseeker watches football and
if footballers are worth their wages.
“Only the World Cups and Euro Cups”, came
the reply.
The recruitment consultant self-righteously
and
indignantly
said,
‘You would pay more for entertainment than for health care!’, and
hung up.
There is no comparison between
a wage as a reward and a wage not to work somewhere else. One is a
reward for
completed work
and the other is a marketing tool. Just like a painting is worth
millions today due to its
fame
and scarcity and was
worth
practically nothing when it was painted 200 years ago, the market
determines the value – it is worth what someone will pay for it.
That
is definitely not to say that NHS workers are only paid what
they
are worth, yet one can’t really believe that the Government thinks
that the workers are paid enough not to go elsewhere for work. That
is the Government’s supposed view, not my own. I think nice people should be paid a lot of money even before they get a job. Realistically, if the Government said Hey! Work in the NHS and get paid a high wage, who would they get? Yes, I know! Pay kind and caring people what they are worth WHEN they work in the NHS. Don't pay narcissistic, greedy, psychopaths to care for vulnerable people, so keep wages low. Don't judge me - I really don't know!
Let
us imagine being given hope for the future and support from a
like-minded individual to the recruitment consultant above, who uses
only snippets of knowledge and understanding in their lives to ‘get
by’ and as a result, is subject to the risk of being challenged on a
daily basis – no wonder that person needs to be resilient. It
simply does not fly that a person can be adequately advised for
successful re-integration into a society without first indoctrinating
them to comply with the overall flavour of madness that currently
exists at that given time.
Today, sharing your personal
details and lives online is necessary to get a job, otherwise one is
deemed to be
unsociable or too private (Weirdo!)
So,
supporting recovery in its best composition means accepting that
one’s own thoughts and understanding count for very little, and a
steering of a person towards ‘goals’ that should be achieved may
not be the goals that the mentally unwell person aspires to, or later
adheres to.
On
hope:
‘Wonko
the Sane laughed.
It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot
before and was happy with.
“Ah yes,” he said, “that’s
to do with the day I finally realised
that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it
in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better.”’
-
Douglas Adams – ‘So long and thanks for all the fish’.
The
Mental Health Foundation and Marie Jahoda in 1958, seem to recognise
that resilience to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday
life are essential for good mental health. Just how much of everyday
life should we ignore? Thank goodness for heuristics – or should we
download some new ones? But isn’t that like saying we need some new
clichés?
Strong
relationships within the business/study organisation can support recovery.
The
recovery process has:
Correction
from others as being useful;
Hope
and optimism that the individual themselves can segue into a
(dysfunctional) society (that staggers from one crisis to another,
although that is not how it is usually described);
Contra-wise to sliding into society un-noticed in order to avoid scurrilous
gossip, the individual should build a positive sense of their own
identity and overcome the challenges and stigma of mental ill health
(in other words, hide your light under a bushel and only be yourself
at home and with friends and family OR shout from the rooftops that
you suffer from something that everyone else on the planet fears;
mental ill-health);
Have
meaning and purpose, including social roles and goals in work and
education;
Empowerment
and responsibility over one’s own life (despite
being told how to live your life at the beginning of the recovery
process).
To
the previous list, this: Oh! I give up! Here are all my personal
details online and pictures of me doing interesting things; now will
you leave me alone? No? How about if I share information about other
people with you? Still no? Okay, I promise to have opinions on
everyday and mundane things and I will buy a book on armchair
politics and both pontificate drunkenly while propping up a pub bar,
and publish comments on social media sites, ‘Deal
me in’ - inspired by ‘The Game’
by Dory Previn, track number nine on ‘Mythical Kings and
Iguanas’, 1971. (Available on YouTube)
Next in this series on Mental Health and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace is 'Return to work' ....
'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.'
OU Students: Don't forget to contact your tutor for advice
Samaritans
(These people are really cool and non-judgemental)
https://www.samaritans.org/
Call 116 123 (Free) in the UK
NHS
You can get help from NHS 111: by calling 111 from your phone; by using 111 online in the NHS App.
111
can direct you to the best place to get help if you cannot contact your
GP during the day, or when your GP is closed (out-of-hours). Depending
on what you need, you might be advised to: call 999 or go to A&E in
an emergency. or go to an urgent treatment centre'
Calls
to 111 can take quite a while to connect to a person - there are often
long waits. If you need support outside of your immediate family,
friends, or work / learning establishment, due to the, often lengthy,
wait to be connected to someone on 111, it might be advisable to ask
someone to call it for you.
word count 1616
Opinion