Mental Illness

Valerya Galindo

Mental Illness

General Purpose: To persuade

Specific purpose: To persuade my audience to help reduce the stigma attributed to mental

illness in this country.

Thesis: Mental illnesses is associated with a lot of stigmatization especially on adolescents and therefore people should be made aware of the risk factors as well as the possible solutions of mental health.

Introduction

The problem regarding mental health among adolescents has for a long time been a threat, counting thousands of young people being held captive of the various mental health illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders. Being a mental health patient is associated with stigmatization. There is a need for the people the to be sensitized about the causes of mental health problems so that they are able to detect the conditions before they arise and through knowing the causes, they will, therefore, be able to take preventive measures against the mental illnesses.

Body:

Causes

The most probable risk factors of mental illness among the adolescent is drug and substance abuse (Erskine, 2015).

Stressful life events have also been attributed to the onset of mental illnesses not only among the adolescents but also to the general population (Spinazzola, 2017).

Sexual abuse can trigger mental illness.

Domestic violence has been linked to the onset of depression.

Solution

Avoiding substance and drug abuse have been said to reduce the onset of mental illnesses (Cockerham, 2016).

D. Education and doing some exercises have as well been said to reduce the onset of mental illnesses (Weinberg & Gould, 2018).

Conclusion

Mental illnesses have been for a long time known to have an early onset among the young adults especially the adolescents and this has been provoked by the individual behaviors such as drug and substance abuse while others have been caused by unavoidable stressful events. The public should be made aware of the causes of the mental illness so that they are able to prevent them at an early stage before they become severe and therefore reducing stigmatization.

References

Cockerham, W. C. (2016). Sociology of mental disorder. Taylor & Francis.

Erskine, H. E., Moffitt, T. E., Copeland, W. E., Costello, E. J., Ferrari, A. J., Patton, G., … & Scott, J. G. (2015). A heavy burden on young minds: the global burden of mental and substance use disorders in children and youth. Psychological medicine, 45(7), 1551-1563.

Spinazzola, J., Ford, J. D., Zucker, M., van der Kolk, B. A., Silva, S., Smith, S. F., & Blaustein, M. (2017). Survey evaluates: Complex trauma exposure, outcome, and intervention among children and adolescents. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 433-439.

Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. S. (2018). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. Human Kinetics.