BY
WAISWA JACOB
A Situation Health Analyst, Expert and Manager, and a Community Psychologist
+256774336277
www.situationhealthanalysis.blogspot.com
In Collaboration with the
Integrated Mental Health Services –Uganda (IMHS-UG)
and the
Decision Making and Situation Health Management –Consultants (DISHMA -CONSULT)
Imhs_ug@yahoo.comwaiswajacobo@yahoo.co.uk
INTRODUCTION
Life if full of diverse encounters both meaningful, worthy celebrating, regretful and unforgivable –whose remedy could be thought to be revenge or otherwise, suicide and aggression of all forms.
The origin of such encounters could vary from one person to another, and the following could be examined; genetic make-up, post-natal experiences, child-hood disorders and handling, development risk exposure and vulnerability, family mental-health problems and contagious family stress, generational family, national and societal troubles, problems to do with economic miseries and undignified living, value-less living, family and society bullies, poor self and life planning and management –including the environment in which we live, contempt of life and existence rights of others and above all, failure of leaders to identify and intervene to solve the stated problems.
Human problems are occurring and different levels –ranging from family to schools, to work, to leadership and institutional circles and the wider communities. Therefore, multi-faced problem-solving programmes and technologies need to be designed to reduce human and environmental impact and damage of the human afflictions, while instituting national or global precaution and 24 hour check systems to prevent occurrences and make prevention programmes major focal concern though hand in had with scaling down impact.
It would require a sort of multi-barrel gun or two-barrel to shoot either ways to control and prevent incidences to disasters while ensuring investment in research and information banks. In doing all these, a sense of humanism must be developed right from family levels through influential institutions and a must during policy formulations.
Reception
Affected persons need courtesy, to be shown love and care, and to be assured to safety or hope for the best. Polite questions could be used to enlist the gravity of troubles, and allow narration of encounters while ensuring all are released out to no molecule left.
Outline Programme Highlights
Being a participatory approach, it would be a patient’s right to know what the recovery programme would entail. There must be a systematic relay of recovery actions. It would help promote planning and management as well as collaborative relationship with patient and in patient.
Outline Troubles
On behalf of the patient, help to outline and note down troubles since it would require addressing systematically one at a time over a given period of time.
Purpose
Using polite questions guide the affected person to safe thinking and possibility of action. Let the person come out with an outline of life goals and plan of action. Only use same polite question to have patient think about what you think he or she could do.
Outline Possible Re-building Actions
Guided with helping questions to solutions and alternatives, let the person find steps out of troubling situations. Base the enabling questions on the outlined troubles. In them, get centered on the patient self of the past troubles, how he or she dealt with them, how he could have approached them and what would be required of now as in the future –looking at progressive living, confronting problems, negotiating and manouvering around obstacles and looking at alternatives, then patient self of healthy-living, relationships and career development remedy actions.
While at environmental level, would be the need to identify environmental toxins, dealing with them and preventing self-penetration. Also, to examine would be the patient’s spirituality extent and subsequent re-orientation, issues of family life, society and ambitions, but in a futuristic sense. Collaborative relationship of at least 30 minutes per day would be much benefiting.
Forming Values, New Character and Personality
These would be consistent with outcomes of the dangerous person and troubling experience, self-proclaimed strategic vision and implementable action plan of the near and far future. And helping form a lifestyle that flies all the way to life goals and a system of tireless search for answers whenever trouble ensued.
It would also involve making friends and coming up with hobbies or a kind of trusted team with which to share visions and special person to consult in case of extremes and confidential experiences. They could be written down and plastered on the wall or reflected upon every day in prayer and social interactions or in positive self-talk -both before and after new similar and bad incident.
Success at several new encounters in life would create a character that floats over challenges and trouble and a personality that slices and crashes through obstacles. It would a kind of personality that “superman” has that flies through concrete, fire and space.
But at this stage also we could look at goodness and reality living to avoid excesses the may be turn out to be a personality toxin to a future patient. The does and don’t would actually be a new guide and real self to health self relationships and future self as in social interactions.
Encourage Self-help Groups
Allow patient to interact with others in the same stage of counseling session or therapy administration. Helping them verbally re-define themselves and self-assert on new lifestyle. Allow one at go speaking among members and let others listen as one is speaking. This could help them build self-confidence, self-esteem and positive attitude to life and people. Guided by questions encourage willingness to express themselves freely in public or any other interpersonal interactions.
Meditating over Problems and Their Solution, and Self-definition
Meditation helps to increase concentration to allow flow of answers to troubling conditions or situation. It helps to find ways of by-passing fear and/or maneuvering through with problem to succeed. It requires quiet and non-distracting place and position to enable focussed problem examining and solution derivation.
It is an activity that would occur during rest time or bed-time, after work or over weekends –depending on the gravity of the problem. Time taken would range from 30 minutes to 2 hours accompanied by dietary checks and conscious. And at the end of it all, the person would have come up with a new self to promote or test in a social scenario.
Outlining Possible Action Plans for Mental Health Care and Self-Management
a) Constantly asking self and arising situation questions.
b) Self-clarification and/or seeking clarification.
c) Rejecting or ignoring what is un-purposeful, meaningless and mis-representing.
d) Searching and doing activities and hobbies which a satisfying.
e) Relaxing and deep breathing when fatigued and in fearful situation.
f) Have sufficient sleep of at least 8 hours.
g) Confront and argue out cases but with respect for others, show dis-satisfaction with a statement of unfairness. Let annoying people know that you are not happy with them or when angered by them.
h) Defend your good values and self-representations and know kind of person you are debating since there could be those not worthy debating with or even wasting time on. In that case take them the way they are and give-up on them or chose to ignore whatever, mis-representations they bring-up in future –as you focus time and attention on what means lot to you or what is most important since you could have noted how time wasting it would be dealing with some people. Make them not to matter any more in future while you keep a distance away from them.
i) Focus on activities that bring you success and happiness.
j) Look for and focus on what is good and real by sense, feeling and touch. The three elements must exist before responding to concluding on any incident.
k) Find trust-worthy people -with whom to constantly discuss emerging issues and those of conflict type
l) Ensure time for your self everyday after hectic time, a time of self-reflection, having refreshments, a time to plan and re-new values and plan actions for success, harmonious living and healthy living or hygiene aspects of you. It could also be a time to attend to hobbies and favorable time with friends.
m) Create distance and boundaries for toxic people around you. These show how much they can influence you or have you respond to their actions. There are those you just have to ignore or at best leave a high and/or diplomatic hand-shake.
n) Choosing freely what would work for you and leaving out what is useless and destructive or distractive.
o) Acting on problems as they arise to promote personal mental stability.
p) Having private consultant and consulting him or her upon extremes.
q) Understanding and making decisions basing on who you are
r) Reviewing social circles in ones meditation time. Some of the people may have changes their ways towards you to allow some degree of interaction.
s) Saying hi or hullo could be universal that must not be ignored even to your ardent enemy.
t) Having time for self-stimulation and at least four intervals of laughter in a day
u) Continue hoping for what you have not achieved. Hoping soon motivates you to develop solutions and action ways to success.
v) Having a duty to examine self before examining other. In many cases people are the same or have similar problems. You would find self-tolerance and for others along the way.
w) Focussed living: on cherished values and beliefs –that are reviewed during meditation time
x) Sharing vision with trusted others to help build self esteem and/or confidence in achieving what you aspire for.
y) Try to reason around most of the frequent troubling experiences that you encounter. Most of the answers could be got through simple reasoning.
z) Focusing on the good aspects of self and achievements made. This promotes self-trust, self-esteem and/or confidence.
aa) Re-visiting your spiritual status while mindful of excess that could result to through extremist religious practices rather than abundant positives obtainable from spirituality as a whole –untainted by man’s selfish interest for self-glorification.
bb) Identifying warning signs and seeking advice from knowledgeable, experienced and skilled professional.
cc) Loving and caring for yourself. This must be a constant or day to day reminder for your-self.
