Mental Illness and The Effects in Domestic Life

The following research project is one that you produced in collaboration with Shea Ortiz and Amelia Price (Me).

Mental health and illnesses can take a mental toll on a person in the world, in society, and on one’s social skills. Mental health and illness can deconstruct the social life for a person due to bipolar disorder, depression, or anxiety. Mental disorders are highly prevalent and represent a major cause of disability worldwide. These illnesses put people, daily lives, and daily tasks, at stake. Any kind of mental disability can be so crippling that there can be a loss of motivation and energy. Following this, is has been researched about the effects of mental illnesses and disabilities. 

In August our English class started a book called Educated by Tara Westover. This is a memoir by Tara and it takes us through her life and how her family, but mostly her father, struggles with mental illness. Her family mostly runs off of patriarchy, controlled by their father. With this, it took a toll on their social lives. Their family never really went out, the children didn’t go to public school and never got an education or a social life. This derived our desire to research about mental illnesses and to question about whether or not mental illnesses can affect domestic life. 

This bibliography and research could be in motivation for a larger project. This could be a project for further research on the effects of mental health overall. This project would be of psychology due to the social-economical humanity. It is interesting to research further about these effects of mental health to get more knowledge for others to know more about it to help out those with mental illnesses. Mental health and the disabilities that follow aren’t acknowledged as much as it needs t, so this could become a bigger project to make this a more known subject. 

Kernberg, O., & Yeomans, F. (2013). Borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder: Practical differential diagnosis. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy032.nclive.org/docview/1291896843/abstract/B856CA9D0A494C6FPQ/1?accountid=9935 

Mental health is a big factor when having a domestic life. As many families aren’t all poster stickers on the bumpers of cars. There will be fighting and disagreements, yet some families receive the shorter end of the stick. In Tara Westover’s, Educated, she explains situations in which she has lived in a lifestyle controlled by toxicity in her family due to mental instability. Westover’s whole family has endured through decisions brought on by poor mentality, paranoia, and unjust actions. At a young age, Tara remembers a story her father had described to her, “[m]ine had crickets. That’s the sound I hear as my family huddles in the kitchen, lights off, hiding from the Feds who’ve surrounded the house. A woman reaches for a glass of water her silhouette is lighted by the moon. A shot echoes like the lash of a whip and she falls… -but like I said, none of this happened” (3). Later in her adult life, Tara would soon find this story false after researching the story and resulting in the shocking realization that her father was unwell after his belief in that version of the story. Her father is exempting symptoms of bipolar disorder.  Here, the clear loss of reality testing, the presence of hallucinations and/or delusions, or inappropriate social behavior usually leads to intervention by others to control the patient, interventions that are typical enough to confirm the loss of reality testing and to warrant the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Her father’s belief in situations that have not happened has shaped Tara and her siblings’ sense of reality and trust in society because of his bipolar personality disorder. Due to the amount of power the patriarchy has over Tara’s family, her father’s beliefs and rules don’t strike as odd and that will cause major issues with having a sense of reality in the Westover children as they get older. 

Autunes, A., Frasquilho, D., Azeredo-Lopes, S., Silva, M., Cardoso, G., & Caldas-de-Almeida, J. M. (2018). The effect of socioeconomic position in the experience of disability among people with mental disorders: findings from the World Mental Health Survey Initiative Portugal. London, UK: BioMed Central.  Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy032.nclive.org/central/docview/2089727327/abstract/1B64CD79D3B94334PQ/1?accountid=9935. 

Mental disorders are a major cause of disability with impacts on daily functioning and quality of life, which has been associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. Tara Westover experienced that as her father kept her from public learning, social interactions with people outside of her family, and overall personal milestones. Using data from the Portuguese Mental Health Survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional study, several logistic regression models with interaction terms were performed to evaluate the effect of different indicators of socioeconomic position on the disability reported by people with any mental disorder. Odds ratios were estimated at the specific values of the main effects and interaction terms between the presence of any mental disorder and education, employment status, self-perceived financial deprivation, and subjective social status. The findings of this study indicate that the disability reported by people with mental disorders varies according to socioeconomic position and draw attention to the need to develop rules to address these inequalities.

Tough, H., Siegrist, J., & Fekete, C. (2017). Social relationships, mental health and wellbeing in physical disability: a systematic review. London, UK: BioMed. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy032.nclive.org/central/docview/1905066624/abstract/AA2F24CCB7F44170PQ/1?accountid=9935. 

Mental health followed by mental illnesses is becoming a more relevant problem. As stated in Social relationships, mental health and wellbeing in physical disability by Hannah Tough says that this disability is a growing health problem, not least in aging populations worldwide. Social statuses and lives are being negatively impacted by one’s mental health and illness. It is deemed as a barrier to the world outside of your mind, and as Tough states that it is a disability in major areas of everyday life. In a constructed research by Tough, it is said that depression followed by anxiety and other mental disorders, tends to weaken social experience and life. As with Tara and her family, struggling with bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety, weakened their social experience and they had little to no social lives or social knowledge. With Tara and her father’s control, Tara was not allowed to venture out and be in the social norm, therefore having a barrier to her social life. Mental illnesses really can deconstruct the social norm for any person dealing with said depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Ewart, S., Happell, B., Bocking, J., Platania-Phung, C., Stanton, R., & Scholzw, B. (2017). Social and material aspects of life and their impact on the physical health of people diagnosed with mental illness. Oxford, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy032.nclive.org/docview/2289492573/abstract/8504940869D9407APQ/1?accountid=9935.      

The diagnoses with mental health in the material aspects of life and their impact on the physical health of people risk the oversight of social-economic conditions as stated by Ewart. With mental health, it can deteriorate the physical health of a person, because it is stated that people diagnosed with mental illnesses tend to live shorter and poorer lives by 20 years shorter than the general population. As stated again in the paper, what follows mental illness, as stated by participants of the research, experienced energy loss and physical immobilization, intense fear, suicidality, cognitive overload, intense mood states , overwhelming physical agitation, direct psychosocial disability related to mental health states, such as social withdrawal, loss of self‐esteem and loss of ability to carry out basic daily tasks. Mental health can be crippling and disabling and put one at risk for daily life; making calls, doing work, getting out of bed, taking care of yourself, and other daily life things can be in jeopardy. Much like Tara and her family was at risk with these things. They didn’t believe things in the cultural norm due to their beliefs and mental disabilities and put them at stake with their health and social life.