Mental Health: A Case Study

Mental health is the ability to cognitively cope with stress in life in a healthy way and live life to its potential despite circumstances. Everyone faces stress, ranging from pending due dates to selling a house. However, positive mental health is shown by how well the person emotionally handles the situation. An example of this would be if Sally, who was selling her house, began aerobic exercise to decrease her stress level. Through this activity, she is also able to spend time with her friends and talk to them about her circumstances. Not all aspects of mental health depend on exercise though. Support systems, outside pressure, and genetics have an enormous affect despite the many of a maintaining positive mental health. Cassie is …show more content…
Psychotherapy has been proven to help improve mental health and help change people’s attitudes. This works by firstly, learning new ways to think. Many times people, who have been dealing with diseases such as anorexia, repeat the same thought processes. These thoughts gave way into the disease and continually allow it to worsen. Through psychotherapy, clients can establish new thought processes and brain patterns. This will affect how the clients view and value themselves. Secondly, clients can see how different actions affect outcomes. Counselors can teach clients how their brain learns habits and how to break those patterns. Through this learning, the clients can feel empowered through knowledge and continue past regular visits to build healthy thought processes. Finally, psychotherapy helps clients realize how actions are their beneficial or harmful to them or others. Often times when clients have a negative mental health it harms the people who are closest to them such as family. When one person has a negative view of themselves or unhealthy habits, it will impact their interactions. This could range from not being able to focus on their conversations to angry outbursts and a myriad of other exchanges. Oftentimes, when one member of a family has these tendencies, other members begin to experience a decline in mental health, such as depression. Therefore, …show more content…
Every therapist’s views and ways of counseling is different. While each therapist focuses on different points for psychotherapy, some of the main features that deeply impact the success include thinking out loud or writing his or her thoughts, having an unconditional support system, and being in a judgement free environment. Oftentimes, when people have a problem, they tend to ruminate on it and increase its perceived difficulty. When therapists have the clients talk or write about their problem in a coherent way, the problem can be put into perspective. All the fear of what could go wrong can be named and described. With that fear stated, the counselor and client can begin to set up a plan for how to handle those problems in the future. Through working out these problems, either real or possible, a relationship can be built where the client has an unconditional support system. This support system may not be found in friendships, either do to the friends or the immensity of the problem. A counselor is trained to handle such problems and oftentimes have expansive experience helping other clients with similar difficulties. The counselor can assure the client that the problems that he or she faces are not unusual they can build the plan for the next steps, a strong support system and accountability is formed. This is partly why psychotherapy