Mental Health and Illness: Sociological Approach

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Introduction

Mental health is important and is a key area of concern among the components of health. It includes emotional, physical, and social health. For a person to be productive in most of their activities, Employees build good relationships with their colleagues at the workplace and deal with as well as adapt to diversity, they should be in good mental health (Brossard & Chandler, 2022). Mental wellness is important in peoples lives, starting from the younger age to the adulthood stage. People may encounter an intellectual challenge at any point in their lives. The sociology approach to mental health and illness is a key area to be given proper attention in ensuring that people are living a healthy lifestyle.

The factors that cause mental health issues are similar across human beings. However, medically, the factors may differ from one person to another, which means that they vary among individuals. These variables could be life experiences such as abuse or trauma, biological causes such as alterations in DNA or the brains chemistry, or a family history of ones mental health (Thomas, 2018). Other factors associated with poor mental wellness are social isolation, stressful work environments, physical illnesses and diseases, quick societal change, sexism, and quick environmental or societal change (Mahase, 2020). People ignore the mental health topic by assuming everyone has their own, although the issues are widespread. It is easily dismissed and stigmatized, as everyone who sought a cure was discouraged.

There is a difference between mental well-being and mental disease. Mental illness describes all mental diseases that can be diagnosed and are defined by changes in mood, thoughts, and behavior, which can be described as discomfort or deteriorated functioning (Luthans & Broad, 2022). The phrase sociology of mental health is used in this research study to refer to broad ideas and studies that cover the causes, progression, and effects of mental diseases. The word also refers to studying individual and environmental factors that support or improve mental health.

Unique Sociological Approach to Mental Health and Illness

Economic and other forms of social stratification are emphasized as factors of mental health and mental illness in the empirical work produced by the sociological approach to mental health. Research on stressor exposure, social interactions, and societal responses to mental diseases are the main foci of this study (Brossard & Chandler, 2022). The sociological method also offers a distinctive perspective on the severe societal repercussions of mental illness, including socioeconomic achievement. This method also contributes to the study of the social determinants that affect how individuals and institutions identify mentally ill individuals, how people are treated and how that treatment differs by socioeconomic class, religion, and ethnicity, and who is more likely to seek mental health care.

The disagreement between social causality and social selection explanations for the association between mental diseases and social class poses a significant challenge to the sociological approach to mental disorders. According to the social selection hypothesis, people with mental problems are less likely to move up or down the economic ladder, contributing to the higher prevalence of mental diseases in the lower socioeconomic classes (Thomas, 2018). Interpreting the relationship between social stratification and mental illness and health is complicated by the consequences of this dispute.

The Stressor Exposure Perspective

The stress exposure viewpoint, which holds that a mixture or concentration of stressors and challenges can induce the emergence of a mental condition, is the most well-known and widely used position within the social context approach to mental health. This approach, which dominates sociology, is concerned with the degree of change or threat presented by outside events and, more recently, with the possibility that ongoing, unresolved stresses might endanger ones bodily and mental well-being (Mahase, 2020). The main premise of this method, which builds on the long history of social epidemiology in the area, is that social inequalities play a significant role in determining unequal exposure to stressors by social class or social location. Through the emergence of mental diseases or disorders in underprivileged communities, the consequences of chronic stress exposure may further socioeconomic inequality.

The Social Relationships Perspective

Resources to lessen the negative effects of stressor exposure or to prevent it are allocated differently by socioeconomic class and geography in addition to stressor exposure. The main social resource categories that differ by social class are as follows: (1) social integration, which is typically defined as having access to worthwhile and useful social roles; (2) social network characteristics; (3) family structure; (4) received and perceived social support; and (5) coping methods.

The Societal Reaction Perspective

According to an assessment of the sociology of mental health, there isnt conclusive proof that labeling or other societal response processes cause mental disease. The societal response viewpoint does, however, provide light on social prejudices towards those who exhibit mental illness symptoms, which are frequently seen as socially abnormal. Sociologists of mental health generally agree that mental diseases are objective things, not just the result of social constructs (Pepping & MacDonald, 2020). The fact that mental illness symptoms may be seen in all countries, despite cultural differences in how they are diagnosed and presented, provides the strongest support for this claim.

This stance presents a challenge for sociologists of mental health since it assumes that the medical model is widely accepted, making theoretical discussions with other sociological subfields (such as the sociology of deviance) more problematic. A deviant viewpoint is no longer frequently used in studies of the genesis of mental illnesses in the general population (Luthans & Broad, 2022). The dosimetric paradigm, extensively utilized in medical research, is applied differently by the stressor exposure model. This endorsement of a different version of the medical model is still debatable. It is likely connected to the perceived gap between the sociology of mental well-being and the more widely accepted sociology of inequality.

Psychological Models Influence on the Mental Health and Illness Sociology

The impact of social psychology theories on the subject also contributes to the separation between the sociology of psychiatric health and general sociology. Social psychologists have embraced mental well-being concepts from social and developmental psychology. Collaborations that look at the effects of stressor accumulation throughout an individuals life are bringing closer sociological and psychological research streams on the connection between stressor exposure and mental health (Briganti & Le Moine, 2020). The majority of stressor exposure measures used in research are straightforward counts or sums of life events occurring over a brief period, which presents a serious problem because it tends to focus on recent exposures rather than the interactions of various types of stressor exposure over the long term. Examining the connections between stresses over time and their cumulative effects on mental health and well-being is a key technique for determining how stressors affect people throughout their lives.

The Biological Perspective on Mental Disorders

The study of neuroscience has introduced a new problem to the sociology of mental health. Federal funding organizations frequently support this study because they think it will help humanity find new treatments or solutions for mental illnesses (Pepping & MacDonald, 2020). The experimental and epidemiologic method of sociology is being characterized as lower-quality research, in contrast to neuroscience and its measuring tools like cortisol sampling (Briganti & Le Moine, 2020). The growing importance of neuroscience in the study of mental diseases does not preclude the relevance of societal factors, though. The strength of the emerging neuroscience of mental diseases is that it presumes that social influences and biological processes interact.

Conclusion

The advantages of good mental health are that one is able to reach their full potential, participate in community activities, and have the ability to handle daily stress. There are certain aspects that interfere with mental health, such as ailments, childhood trauma, bad intrapersonal relationships, and others. It is upon the individual to improve their mental health and take good care of it. Mental health patients report various symptoms and they include withdrawal from everyday activities, hopelessness, short temper, self-harm, fatigue, loss of interest and insomnia, and energy loss. One can take care of their mental health by increasing interactionism, participating in physical activities, sleeping adequately, volunteering, and other active activities, believing that there is a solution to their problem. In severe cases, one is advised to seek medical and professional assistance.

References

Briganti, G., & Le Moine, O. (2020). Artificial intelligence in medicine: today and tomorrow. Frontiers in medicine, 7, 27. Web.

Brossard, B., & Chandler, A. (2022). Introduction: Towards a Critical Renewal of the Sociology of Mental Health. In Explaining Mental Illness (pp. 1-8). Bristol University Press. Web.

Luthans, F., & Broad, J. D. (2022). Positive psychological capital to help combat the mental health fallout from the pandemic and VUCA environment. Organizational dynamics, 51(2), 100817. Web.

Mahase, E. (2020). COVID-19: Mental health consequences of pandemic need urgent research, the paper advises. BMJ, m1515. Web.

Pepping, C. A., & MacDonald, G. (2020). The Influence of Attachments in Close Relationships on Mental Health. In Making an Impact on Mental Health (pp. 43-70). Routledge. Web.

Thomas, S. P. (2018). Announcement of awards for best research paper and best practice paper of 2017. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 39(3), 199-199. Web.

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