Chapter 1: What is Mental Health?

Question 1

Mental health includes the ability to:

Answer 1

• understand onset and one’s life
• relate to other people and respond to environment
• experience pleasure and enjoyment
• handle stress and withstand discomfort
• evaluate challenges and problems
• pursue goals and interests
• explore choices and make decisions

Question 2

How do we examine mental health?

Answer 2

many psychological tests

assess mental capacity/ capabilities

Question 3

Cross-sectional View

Answer 3

only one brief point in time

Question 4

What influences our mental health?

Answer 4

the environment, stressors, life events and substance abuse, politics, culture, biology

Question 5

What is our brain?

Answer 5

physical organ of the body that produces mental activity

a physical object

Question 6

What is our mind?

Answer 6

set of functions and experiences resulting from a combination of brain activity and the environment in which it operates
a construct

Question 7

Mental Health from a physical science perspective

Answer 7

less variance
emphasis on function of the brain, neurotransmitters and the endocrine system
explores factors that may affect the function of these biological systems

Question 8

Mental Health from a social science perspective

Answer 8

more variance can occur
effects of family life, culture, society, politics, etc
popular in the mid-20th century

Question 9

What are some problems with reductionist thinking?

Answer 9

often is narrow minded
ignores other factors and influences
narrows treatment options to include only medications or other biological treatments

Question 10

deinstitutionalization

Answer 10

governments to decrease the use of psychiatric hospitals and replace these with community-based treatment

Question 11

epidemiology

Answer 11

the study of distribution of health and illness within populations

Question 12

prevalence

Answer 12

the proportion of individuals in a population that have a certain health condition

Question 13

incidence

Answer 13

the proportion of people who have a new case of the condition being studied

Question 14

years lived with disability

Answer 14

number of years of life that have been accompanied by a disability due to a disease or injury

Question 15

years of life lost

Answer 15

measure of the number of years of life lost due to premature mortality in the

Question 16

disability adjusted life years

Answer 16

combining the years lived with disability and the years of life lost
estimates the “burden of disease”

Question 17

burden of disease

Answer 17

the impact of a health problem in an area measured by finacial cost, mortality, morbidity, etc