Enhancing community intergration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Enhancing community intergration - Essay Example Kennedy signed the law requiring states to begin investing in community-based mental health programs rather than funding state institutions for treating individuals with mental illness, the promise remains unfulfilled" In the modern times, meaning of community and its involvement is fast thinning. There is no doubt that we live in a deprived sense of 'loss of community'. Sociologists have untiringly pointed out this bereavement of modern times. "Maurice Stein's 1960 review of major sociological and anthropological community studies concludes with the central finding of a disappearance of the sense of community among residents of the towns studies (Stein 1960)," Rossi (2001, p.32). Even though olden days had their share of mental ill health, modern times of stress and strain have thrown up a plethora of mental health problems for people of all ages, especially for the elderly. Mental health problems could be very difficult for the afflicted person and for his family. As it is mostly a life span problem, with certain relief combined with cure, or sometimes simply progressive, the problem has to be faced for years and decades. Mental health problems cannot be faced in isolation. It needs help from family, school, and more importantly from community and society. ... It is not an individual problem either. It is the problem of community and society and should be treated so. Community has to take fair share of its responsibility because a person going through a mental sickness, or being cured and coming out of it, has a right to expect better and more considerate treatment from community around him. Treatment meted out to him by the community will be taken as standard measurement of his achievement in being cured, or the lack of it. Reaction of the community and people around him could send an individual reeling back into serious and more difficult mental problems, or can encourage him to come out of it. Afflicted person in his hopelessness of future and helplessness will be very watchful and wary of people around him. He would clutch at any kindness, but could turn violent or morose at the very hint of discrimination or ridicule. Mary and Andrew are mother and son, and the son is afflicted by the unfortunate Schizophrenia. We learn from his own words that Andrew treats his mental inadequacies as a form of education and a boon. He feels that he would never come out of his childhood, and experiences the complete happiness of childhood any time again, will never ask for better things and get disillusioned. He has his hobbies, his pets, his ideas and in his small world he is happy. Community around him had been understanding and cooperative and there lies the real root of Andrew's fulfilment. Is Andrew deceiving himself or taking a brighter view of his very difficult-to-cure mental problem It could be anything. But the fact remains that Andrew is happy in the small community, in their house along with his mother Mary. He could be blocking out the difficulties of the