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Barrier Assessment

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24 views6 pages

Barrier Assessment

Uploaded by

juangonzalezmanuel511
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 1

ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER

Student’s Name

Institution affiliation
ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 2

Assessment of Community- Level Barrier.

As discussed in week 2 assignment, suicide and homicide are some of the violent actions

which have been reported in news daily. This has been contributed by the increased use of drugs,

depression, mental disorder and substance abuse. In North Carolina, factors which contributes to

the mental health disorders include age, gender, socio-economic status and race or ethnicity.

These factors have a lot of impact on the health and well-being of the population of North

Carolina. In this week assessment, I will be focusing specifically on the barriers, limitations and

some of the distinguishing features which exist in my community.

In my community, existing barriers to receiving effective mental health treatment are

nothing short of daunting. Basically, the barriers deter the use of mental health treatment

facilities by the people who are mostly suicidal or who are past suicide attempt. The first micro-

level barrier which is financial barrier. Naturally, the cost of care is one of the major barriers

cited frequently by the members of the community. According to research carried out by the

(Sturm and Sherbourne, 2001) about 60-70 percent of the respondents in North Carolina showed

worry about the high cost of treatment for mental health disorders. On the other hand, economist

(Manning et al, 1986) argues that the patterns of metal health services use are sensitive to price.

This implies that the use of services falls as cost rises while the use increase with the better

insurance coverage for the same. Therefore, at North Carolina, most of the individuals without

health care coverage experiences greater barrier to assessing mental health treatment services and

have a lot of unmet needs.

The other critical barrier which impacts health and well-being of the North Carolina

community is a macro-level barrier which relates to the access and funding for the care. One of

such barriers is the limited availability of medication and health professionals. At North
ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 3

Carolina, unavailability of the essential medicines is a prevalent problem affecting most the

individuals suffering from mental health disorders. According to a report released by World

Health Organization, most of the health care centers lacks at least one common antidepressant or

one antipsychotic. Also, the members of the community are not able accessing the health care

services due to lack of enough mental health care professionals in most of the areas. For instance,

in some parts of North Carolina, there is a median of 0.05 psychiatrics and 0.16 psychiatric

nurses per 100,000 people. Also, large number of the people are not able to afford the services

due to the high cost of medication. This posses a significant barrier since many people in the

community are low- and middle-income earners who are still struggling financially.

Finally, stigma and discrimination are another common barrier at North Carolina. Mental

health stigma has been considered to be one of the most common barriers deterring young people

aged between 16-26 from seeking mental illness treatment. According to (Kessler et al., 1996)

more than a third of the individuals suffering from mental health disorders are not able to receive

treatment due to mental illness stigma. To be specific, mental illness stigma refers to the

stereotype and prejudicial attitudes held by the members of the public on the illness. As a result

of the prejudice, most of the people induce fear, worry and finally end up distancing themselves

from the people with mental health problems.

As the rate of suicidal and homicide cases rise as a result of the mental health disorders,

remarkable changes have been put in place on how mental health services are provided in my

community. However, more solutions need to put in place for the barriers hindering most of the

victims of the mental illness. The fist solution is required for the micro-barrier which is financing

of the services. Since mental disorder is not a private matter and its effects can be felt by many

people in the society, the it makes sense that the financial barrier can be easily eliminated by
ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 4

providing mental health benefits to all employed people in the community. When all employers

offer benefits such as health insurance that cover mental health treatments, employee’s assistance

programs, bereavement leave and other important benefits, large number of are people now able

to access the mental health services.

On the macro barrier, the solution to the barrier can be easily addressed if the community

had effective policies on mental health care put in place. For instance, comprehensive mental

health policies and plans are significant in overcoming this barrier since they help in

coordinating actions and ensure that financial resources are available mostly in areas which have

limited resources. Some of the resources which the government needs to invest on so as to

overcome this barrier include increasing the number of mental health facilities and ensure that

there are enough qualified personnel to attend the sick. Also, the government should introduce

free funding of the mental health illness to the low-income earners who cannot afford the

expensive services.

Finally, one can overcome the mental illness stigma by either seeking treatment if you are

sick or encouraging the victim to seek medical attention. The other important way to overcome

this kind of barrier is educating the members of the community both who are sick and those who

are not sick. Also, an individual can join a support group where they will get support and advice

on how to heal.

In summary, the Mental Health Care Act (2017) is a which specifically talks about the

rights of the patients with mental illness. The Act lays down the ethical and legal responsibilities

of mental health professionals. The required ethical issues include the morals and behaviors

which every medic is mandated to follow such as confidentiality and others. Ethics are of great

significant as they maintain good relationship between the medics and the patients. Legal issues
ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 5

include appearing of the psychiatric in court when required to act as a witness and other

incidences. On accreditation and regulation, it is only a qualified medic professional who is

supposed to look after a mental health patient. This is will have a lot of impact on the program as

it will ensure only quality services are offered to the sick.


ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNITY- LEVEL BARRIER 6

References

Sturm, R., & Sherbourne, C. D. (2001). Are barriers to mental health and substance abuse care

still rising?. The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 28(1), 81-88.

Motowidlo, S. J., Packard, J. S., & Manning, M. R. (1986). Occupational stress: its causes and

consequences for job performance. Journal of applied psychology, 71(4), 618.

Kessler, R. C., Nelson, C. B., McGonagle, K. A., Edlund, M. J., Frank, R. G., & Leaf, P. J.

(1996). The epidemiology of co‐occurring addictive and mental disorders: implications

for prevention and service utilization. American journal of orthopsychiatry, 66(1), 17-31.

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