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Why Pursue Mental Health Integration?

It is the right thing to do: The NCCBH vision statement provides the foundation for our work: We are committed to creating and sustaining healthy and secure communities, achieved through a system that holds the needs of consumers paramount, regardless of their ability to pay.

Vital to this commitment is a network of organizations and advocates promoting services of unparalleled value.

NCCBH members primarily serve public sector consumers, those with severe and persistent mental illness or serious emotional disturbance-the needs of this population are often overlooked in primary care and integration planning. We must assure that their needs as well as the needs of the broader community are appropriately addressed.

Many people in the broader community now receive their behavioral healthcare in a primary care setting, and the gap between the medical and behavioral healthcare systems must be bridged: As noted by Robin Dea and many other commentators, there is:

“evidence that many, if not most, people coming into primary care are being treated for psychosocial problems, not organically based medical disease . . . evidence of medical cost offsets from treating behavioral health problems presenting as physical health problems in the primary care setting . . . the assumption that if adequate detection of early stage psychiatric illness took place in primary care, there would be some prevention of patients going to more severe episodes of major psychiatric illnesses . . . and primary care is where most people who have behavioral health problems

Bipolar affective disorder is also referred to as manic-depression disorder, which is a form of a mental illness wherein the patient displays sudden and intense mood swings that are uncontrollable and can be dangerous for the individual as well as those around him/her. It can begin with the patient feeling happy, cause the person to feel utterly depressed the next moment and swing back to a cheerful mood within minutes; it can also stay for months in a mood cycling motion of manic-depressive or mixed episodes.Timely diagnosis and clinical therapy is very important to educate patient and family besides any bigger support group around the individual about the condition, the ways in which it can manifest itself, the danger to the person and how best to control and treat it.Best treatment options for bipolar affective disorder include regular therapy, combined with medication and teaching the patient more about the disorder and tools that are effective in controlling it, including reading a handbook on the subject and learning how to use a workbook on bipolar disorder.Among the latest in the line of many new medications to treat bipolar affective disorder are Aripiprazole or Abilify, atypical anti-psychotic that has been approved for treatment of manic and mixed bipolar disorder episodes since 2004, which benefits the patient by shutting down the brain’s dopamine receptors so they behave more normally and thus, result in mood stabilization and the popular, Celexa. The latter is mainly an antidepressant that has been used

Bipolar Disorder is better known by its former name, Manic Depression; a mental illness where a person manifest mood swings which presents itself in cycles where one switches between depressed, manic and a normal mood. In the U.S.A. over two percent of people are known to suffer from this illess, where thirty percent of all hospitilisations are for psychiatric patients in a single year.Psychiatrists and psychologists have not come up with the actual cause of Bipolar Disorder as of yet. Researches have, however, made steady progress in understanding the brain and how it functions, the actual causes of many mental illness including Bipolar Disorder. This illness is currently understood to be caused by many factors which include biological, emotional, environmental and physical reasons.It has been discovered that some bipolar patients have additional brain cells which is one theory for a biological cause. Research shows that those with Bipolar had thirty percent more brain cells which send signals to others than is normal. There is still speculation as to whether it is the brain cells which are responsible for regulating our moods, our responses to pleasure and also our responses to stress.The disorder tends to run in families, although some that are diagnosed have no family history of the illness. This points to the nature of hereditary as being one of the causes of this mentall illness, so genetics could actually be a cause.What has received lots of attention is the neurotransmitter system as being one of

Music is often dubbed as the universal language. And rightly so. It’s a language that doesn’t need interpreters. Irrespective of the lingual, social, and cultural background of a person music never fails to strike the chord within. Words fall short in the description of this divine gift of God that the human race has been blessed with. A person who is averse to the effects of music is sometimes not even considered to be a human! Such is the power of music. It’s the uniting bond for the people. Be it happiness, sadness, anger, exasperation, love, friendship, madness music is for every occasion. It can be a man’s best friend when the whole world proves to be inadequate for him. Music can be the best companion at times when one seeks some peace of mind in tranquility.Music can also be healing. Many a times music lightens up a dampened mind. It’s almost therapeutic. Even plants and animals are sensitive to music. It has been proved that plants grow well when music is played in the vicinity. Even animals develop fondness for music. Music pacifies hyperactive minds. Music instills calmness in a person and the list can go on. The facets and the benefits of music are actually endless. It is really surprising that in certain beliefs music is thought to be a sin!Music is now discovered to have wonderful effects on a depressed mind. Here I do not mean minds that are temporarily disturbed or depressed