Refusing Treatment For Mental Health
What truly affects mental health is whether or not the afflicted person seeks treatment for their mental health issues. Treatment is the main way of resolving issues that have come to light because of mental health. Normal treatment for those with bad mental health would be to see a therapist or counselor. Students within schools are even given the opportunity to speak to a counselor if they are having trouble. The thing is, talking about problems to someone else may not be a viable treatment as society had once thought.
There comes a time when a person with bad mental health is not always going to accept treatment. In fact, they may refuse it entirely. For adults, they have a legal right to turn down help. In their book, The Right to Refuse Mental Health Treatment, author Bruce Winick claims, “This situation has begun to change in response to judicial and legislative recognition that mental patients possess at least a qualified right to refuse treatment.” The option to seek treatment for mental health issues is entirely in the hands of that person. This would definitely lead to many instances where the person straight up refuses care. Even if the person direly needs help, it is still within their right to turn down treatment which can obviously lead to complications.
It would no doubt cause trouble if the wrong people were not being treated. When given the ability to decide for themselves whether they want to be treated or not, most people will decline. In their article, “Older Adults’ Narratives of Seeking Mental Health Treatment: Making Sense of Mental Health Challenges and “Muddling Through” to Care,” author Kristin Reynolds states “We identified several main storylines that describe the meaning-making and treatment-seeking journeys of older adults: resistance to being labeled with mental health problems (telling stories of resistance, defining mental health issues in mysterious and uncontrollable terms, and experiencing internal role conflict); muddling through the help-seeking process (manifestations of chaos and system-level barriers); and emotional reactions to psychological treatment (hope, fear, and mistrust).” From this quote it is clear that adults have many reasons as to avoid treatment for their mental health ailments. One reason would be out of fear of being reported to the authorities. The last thing people suffering from mental health problems want is to be reported to the police because the therapist misread their signs of expression. Although they may have their reasons, it should not cause adults to refrain from seeking help. Since this possibility is inevitable, those who really need mental health treatment should be forced to accept treatment.
For children dealing with issues, it is up to the parents to decide what is best for their child. In school environments, children have the ability to talk to a school counselor about whatever is troubling them. In a therapeutic setting, the parents have full control over whether or not their child should see a therapist. In school, the children are not forced to see a counselor, but they are advised to. This does not constitute forceful treatment. However, when the parents step in to get their child help, it is seen as being forced to receive treatment. Depending on the severity of the child’s case, the parent’s decision to put their child in therapy or counseling is justified. Issues that children frequently exhibit when growing up are anger, aggression, sadness, and Attention Deficit Disorder. These issues could be a cause for concern and could be a reason that parents seek to put their kids in treatment. Naturally, these problems could spiral out of control if not properly handled and this could lead to the child going down a dark path.
Children who have gone down a dark path have been known to carry their problems into adolescence and even into adulthood. These issues could turn a child into a danger to themselves and others. Usually school shooters and suicide victims have been dealing with long standing mental health problems that have been with them for awhile. Yet, instead of going to treatment, they would rather turn to alternative sources to get help.
Drugs are a main source of coping for many individuals when it comes to dealing with mental health. Many of those who suffer from anxiety or depression, two common mental health issues, turn to drugs in order to deal with their complications. The most common drugs teenagers turn to are marijuana and nicotine. While these drugs may seem like the solution, they’re not. In their article, “Mental Health & Drugs; A Map of the Mind,” author Wylie Jones Jordan states, “New names have been coined for disorders, and synthetic drugs are advertised as a solution to every problem, but the causes are still unknown and, although spontaneous remission can occur, there are no cures.” It is bad enough that teens are turning to drugs instead of seeking help, but now even corporations are advertising to people new drugs that promise to make their problems go away. With all of these promoting the use of drugs, it is clear that drugs have been opened up as a pathway for people living with bad mental health to go down instead of finding a permanent solution.
The reason why therapy fails is because it instills fear in those struggling with mental health. This fear is a result of a social norm that anything that comes across as threatening will be reported to the police or their parents, depending on the context of the situation. It is due to this fear of therapy and opening up to someone that these individuals will turn to drugs to solve their issues. Though therapy may seem intimidating, it is still the best option for mental health treatment. Even if the risk of being reported to the police is increased slightly, it still outweighs the risk of someone who is mentally unstable and has not been treated properly.
References
Jordan. (2020). Mental Health & Drugs; A Map of the Mind. Journal of Mind and Medical Sciences, 7(2), 133–140. https://doi.org/10.22543/7674.72.P133140
Reynolds K, Medved M, Mackenzie CS, Funk LM, Koven L. Older Adults’ Narratives of Seeking Mental Health Treatment: Making Sense of Mental Health Challenges and “Muddling Through” to Care. Qualitative Health Research. 2020;30(10):1517-1528. doi:10.1177/1049732320919094
Winick. (1997). The right to refuse mental health treatment. American Psychological Association.
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xephos1
Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
I was a little confused writing this I would appreciate some constructive criticism and a little help guiding me in the right direction.
Xephos, I can’t tell immediately from your title or your first few sentences what might be your overall Hypothesis for research. I’m going to continue reading until I figure that out, hoping it doesn’t take too long. You don’t want to “bury the lede.”
Mystery solved. I had to read the introduction to the end.
The problem with that strategy is that unless I were your beloved professor and you my beloved student, I probably wouldn’t have made it that far. You haven’t commanded a reader’s attention at any point in the first paragraph.
I know how this happens. High school writing teachers are fond of telling students to start with broad-general-universal statements as a deliberate strategy, then gradually narrow the focus until something interesting is said.
It doesn’t work. Nobody sticks around hoping to see something interesting.
I’m going to break your first paragraphs differently to show a technique.
Reorganized this way, you can see your main ideas clearly, one per paragraph.
1. Mental health IS AN ISSUE. Nobody needs to be told this. Eliminate this paragraph.
2. “Talk therapy” is common. Adults use it. Kids can get it in school. Essential but not riveting. A sentence or two will suffice.
3. Adults can refuse treatment. This is CRUCIAL. Your first essential paragraph. Move it toward the top. And eliminate the repetitions, which are obvious after the reorganization.
4. THE ARGUMENT. This is what makes the essay worthwhile. It’s the ETHICAL CLAIM on which everything rests.
5. THE DILEMMA. Here is where you’ll need to do your persuasion. It identifies the challenge you face getting your Thesis approved.
Notice your most important claims GET THE LEAST DEVELOPMENT in the early paragraphs of your essay. That’s why readers start snoozing.
I’ve saved the most important for last. Your quote includes a CRITICAL CLAIM you may have missed.
—Adults have a QUALIFIED right to refuse treatment, which means a LIMITED right. They can’t ALWAYS refuse treatment when they threaten their own safety or the safety of others.
—Kids in peril have NO PERSONAL right to refuse treatment, as you’ve noted: their PARENTS can refuse for them.
WHAT YOU WANT, I think, is to chip away at that right. You want to put QUALIFIED PERSONNEL in charge of mandating treatment for students who pose a threat. Am I right?
Please move that VERY COMPELLING situation to the very top of your essay. Grab our attention with a threat that we can address.
Helpful?
A note about wordiness. It’s hard to spot in your own work.
Here you use four sentences to do the work of one sentence:
The first sentence is pure waste.
The second sentence repeats the first with details, so we don’t need the first.
The third sentence adds details that could be part of the second.
The fourth makes the only essential claim, so build a strong sentence from the fourth.
See? Then you can tell us in a second sentence why the strategy fails.
Thanks Professor, this is exactly the type of feedback that I needed. I will try to have the rewrite done as soon as possible.
No revisions since substantial feedback.
Provisionally graded. Always eligible for Revisions and a Regrade.
Hey Professor, I completed another rewrite. I had to overhaul this one, but I think it is way better than my first draft. Am I able to get a regrade?
What I will say is that it is definitely easier to come back to a paper and see it in a different light. It helped the rewrite process for sure.
I see the improvements.
Regraded.