07/24/03 Grade: A- Health Care-Mental Illness· Psychosomatic disorders- are impairments in physiological functioning that result from the individual’s emotional state. · Mental disorders have been linked with social change and with the stresses of a modern, industrial society. · Mental illness is a problem for all societies, and its prevalence is not strikingly low in any society. · One effect illness has on the quality of life is that people must endure considerable stress and suffering because of illness, which is a contradiction to our value of good health. · Can lead to family disruption. · An increasing amount of the nation’s economic resources is channeled into the effort’s to combat illness. · People who must cope with stress are more likely to get ill than people who experience little stress. · Women have higher rates of depression than men · Women are necessarily more vulnerable to stress because of undesirable events in their own lives but because of events in the lives of those they care about. · The rates of psychiatric disorders are higher in the lower class, particularly the urban areas. · There tends to be a stigma associated with mental illness. People have negative attitudes and they react negatively toward the mentally ill. · Illness affects the quality of life in many ways. · The illness and the inadequate care that many Americans receive cause stress and suffering. Interpersonal relationships are affected, and certain medical advances threaten individual freedom. Works Cited http://content.health.msn.com/condition_center/mental_health/default.htm http://www.mentalwellness.com/ Coleman and Kerbo. "Social Problems" Prentice Hall, Eighth Edition. 2002. Essay written by Christina Kaufmann |