Mental illnesses can be crippling and demoralizing. One can receive several unsolicited advice on maintaining one’s mental health and on identifying a mental illness, but today I would like to distill the critical factors for mental health recovery into four succinct points.
There are four critical factors in the recovery of mental health: employment, housing, stabilization of medication and symptom interference, and the development of a social network.
1 – Housing
Housing is among the basic human needs, irrespective of whether one iss considered entirely healthy or has a mental illness. If you go through the statistics, the rate of homeless people who remain untreated for mental illness is increasingly alarming.
What is even worse is if these individuals cannot afford basic shelter, there is little hope that they are receiving proper medications, meaning a continual downward spiral is about to take place. Getting stable housing scheme is likely an important factor for mental healthcare sufferers on the road to recovery.
Now it is time to explore what practitioners and consumers alike can do to obtain housing. For practitioners of mental health, one should focus on finding subsidized and affordable or government housing for the mental healthcare sufferer, in an situation ideal that removes them from their immediate environment (as it is susceptible to lead to continued abuses).
Most major cities have government subsidized low-income apartment complexes that you can look into for such consumers. For the receiver of mental healthcare, one must accept that housing is crucial to almost every function in life and finding housing in a shelter is far better than living on the streets. Also, an address will be required to find employment and to receive social security insurance payments if the qualifications for such payments are met, thus making housing crucial to mental health recovery.
2 – Employment
After housing, employment is necessary on the road to self-sustainability and empowerment. One point is critical: do not run too fast. It is OK to re-enter the workforce gradually. Take a part time job, adjust to that, and if you feel ready after a month or two, seek and take on a full-time position. This is also a great time to go back to school if you have been looking into that. Also, any technical skill will provide you much better standing, so, go towards that if you can.
For mental healthcare professionals interested in getting their consumers in higher education as treatment plans, a massive place to guide them is into computer courses dealing with Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL, C++, Java, C#, or Python programming. Such jobs are in huge demand, have good salaries, and can even be done remotely from home in many situations.
With employment comes concern of money management. If one with a mental illness cannot responsibly manage their money, a treatment center fund or family member should be given control of the individual’s funding. This is a touchy subject.
If a mental health sufferer is relinquishing control of funding to ensure no buying of illegal substances occurs, one must make sure the controlling program is reputable and competently managed.
3 – Stabilization of medication and symptom interference
Symptom stabilization and medication is the third part of mental health recovery process. The proper medications ratio can take time and does adjust one’s hormonal and chemical balances. Thus it can be a painful process, but it is worth the battle. So many breakdowns are due to mental health consumers going off their medications or improper medication balances, which a travesty is considering the avoidability of said occurrences.
Set aside the effort to locate the correct mix, this will take into account adjustment of symptom interference levels. That will then add to one’s capacity to keep up sufficient employment in that capacity to manage the cost of suitable housing and independence.
4 – Development of social network
The final key towards mental health recovery is constructing a proactive and strong social network. Isolation is very common among those going through mental illness who have also gone through multiple psychotic breaks. One must find a supportive network or community. The support can be family, friends, or any individual crossing the road to recovery from their own mental illness.
The American mental healthcare facilities is superb for discovering an active social network. While some consumers solely sit around and talk, over time this meeting will turn into employment, and productive oriented endeavors. One must remove themselves from any social gathering that could damage the original mental condition.
Conclusion
Housing, stabilization, employment, and development of social network are four critical keys to mental health recovery. Housing ignites employment, employment aids towards affordable housing. Employment allows for the ability to afford proper medications, which leads to stabilization.