Running head: COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 1

Community Problem Report,

Mental Health issues at UTEP

Chepkosgei Carolyne

The University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

This paper analyses mental health issues on how it has become a major problem everywhere; the

impact on the rise of mental health issues, the mental health issues in the UTEP community, the

biomedical view of mental issues, the conclusion and finally a chart which shows the rate of how

people are affected by this mental health issues.

Keywords: Mental health issues.

Community Problem Report,

Mental Health issues at UTEP

Mental health issue is on the rise and its one of the major problems affecting college and

university students. The mental illness generally refers to the conditions which are characterized

by the alterations in thinking, change in mood, or impaired functioning or behaviors associated

with distress. Most of the students are affected by the mental health issues in the University of

Texas at El Paso.

Impacts on the rise of mental health issues

The rise of mental health issues has large impact on the people worldwide. According to

the report given by the World Health Organization (2001), the mental health issues has a large

impact on individuals the families and the communities at large. The individuals suffer distress

due to the disorders and cannot take part in any work or leisure activity due to being

discriminated from upright individuals who are not affected by the mental health issues. The

World Health Organization estimates that one in every four families, one member suffers from a

mental or behavioral disorder. They urge the families of the affected individuals to provide

physical, emotional support and also to bear the negative impacts and discrimination that is

present in all parts of the world (pg. 24). Referring to Chart 1 many people are affected in the

united states due to depression and there is a large number of adults affected by the mental health

disorders especially in the US.

Mental health issues are variable between the communities, cultural, social groups and

individual people. Curtis E. Sarah (2011) states that the way we function mentally depends on

our environment. The functioning is affected by different ways through the interaction of people

and the social and physical environment which can also be the geographical factors. According
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 4

to Curtis, people with similar mental health issues cannot be treated similarly but, in that case,

they are treated according to the models of mental health care adopted in different places at

different times.

Mental health issues in the UTEP community

Stress, depression and anxiety are among the top mental health problems affecting

students at UTEP. According to the UTEP Prospector (2016), there was a high percentage of

students reporting that stress had directly affected their grades and had negative impacts on their

grades. The most affected by the mental health issues are the freshmen who are trying to adapt to

the campus life and also relationships being one of the factors that lead to the mental health

issues affecting them. Another UTEP Prospector (2017), states that African Americans are more

likely to experience severe mental problems since they choose not to speak out their problems to

be seen crazy and this worsens their situations.

The mental issues can be taken care of before they worsen. According to the UTEP

prospector, the UTEP community has created counseling and psychological services to help the

students who are affected and the ones who are at high risk. The program is open for everybody

who feels some difficulty moving on with life in campus. The program offers mindfulness-based

self-care whereby the participants learn how to bring attention to breath, bodily sensations,

thoughts and feelings through various mindfulness techniques to reduce stress. Also, the

participants learn how to manage emotions, tolerate distressing situations, establish healthy

relationships, develop time management skills, learn how to manage academic stress and lastly,

they learn and practice new methods of dealing with situations that may lead to depression and

anxiety.
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 5

The biomedical view of mental health issues.

Mental health issues have different levels of illness according to their causes. According

to Lock et al. (2001), mental issues can be caused by viral infection, dietary imbalance, problem

of overheating or conditions arising from the natural world. The treatment of the causes includes

restoring proper relationships between the affected individuals and the environment(pg387).

The is no main cause of the mental disorders, the causes vary from one person to another.

The Canyon treatment center states that the disorders come from the constellation of genetics and

environmental factors. A person may have inherited the traits of mental disorders and therefore

the mental illness is more likely to occur to individuals who have relatives with the mental

disorders. Some of the genes that are shared between blood lines can also increase the risk of

mental illness.

Mental health issues recovery involves taking back power and undertaking active

participation. According to Bonny and Stickily (2008), recovery and personal identity is a theme

dominated by service users and is often defined in terms of an ongoing process requiring a

change in attitudes and values. Whatever the rhetoric regarding individualized care, the

recovering person continues to find himself or herself cared for within rigid systems. Flexible

services are considered essential in order to provide individually tailored care, but it is

recognized that views will be competing and conflicting and therefore at best difficult, and at

worst impossible, for services to incorporate (pg.149).

Conclusion.

The mental health issue is a crisis that is affecting people all over the world. Precautions

can be taken to prevent this issues by establishing good and healthy relationships with the ones at
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 6

risk, creating awareness before the issue trucks. The creation of mental health centers also helps

to reduce these rising number of the people affected due to the reduction by treatment.
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 7

References

Curtis, S.E. (2004). Health and inequality. In The geography of mental health in cities (pp. 192-

225). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Lock S., J. M., George D. (2001). The oxford companion to medicine (3 ed.) Oxford university

Press.

World Health Organization. (2001). The world health report 2001: Mental health: New

understanding new hope. Switzerland:

Bonny S.&Stickily T. (2008). Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing.15, 140-153.

The UTEP Prospector 2016

The UTEP Prospector 2017

Chart 1. http://thecanyonmalibu.com/wp-content/uploads/mental-health-disorder-rates.jpg

The Canyon Treatment Center. (n.d.). The need for integrated treatment. Retrieved from

https://thecanyonmalibu.com/treatment/mental-health-treatment/
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 8

Chart 1 Mental disorders in the US

The chart above is from the National Alliance on Mental illness, it provides the statistics that

shows the degree to which mental health disorders occur in the US. According to the chart, you

can notice that one in every five adults experience mental illness in a given year which is

approximately 43.7 million adults, one in 25 will face a serious mental illness which eventually
COMMUNITY PROBLEM REPORT 9

disrupts their life and this sums up to approximately 13.6million adults. Looking on the right side

of the graph you easily notice that depression is one of the major mental illness affecting people

followed by bipolar and schizophrenia which has a smaller percentage on the people affected.