Case Study #2

1. When reading this  question, I wasn’t quite sure what an asylum was although I have heard the term many times and felt like I had a decent grasp of what the term meant, I wanted to be sure so I Googled it. According to http://www.thefreedictionary.com, an asylum is

 1. An institution for the care of people, especially those with physical or mental impairments, who require organized supervision or assistance.
2. A place offering protection and safety; a shelter.
3. A place, such as a church, formerly constituting an inviolable refuge for criminals or debtors.
4. The protection afforded by a sanctuary. See Synonyms at shelter.
5. Protection and immunity from extradition granted by a government to a political refugee from another country.

Now that I have that cleared up, here are some pros and cons. An asylum could be useful for an individual with a mental disorder if they have a unstable home life because it may be provoking their illness in some way. Particular circumstances seem like a controlled environment would be more helpful in progressing towards stability.
The biggest con in my opinion is not being able to interact with the world in the same way that a “normal” person can. Sure we have the internet and cell phones now but it’s not the same as being able to physically interact and experience ‘normalness’. Plus, if an individual isn’t interacting with the outside world, he/she may forget how to do so. Once released from the asylum, it could easily be like entering a new culture after having adapted to the asylum way of like and therefore worsen the disorder that the asylum was supposed to be controlling and treating. For some reason To Kill a Mockingbird keeps coming to my mind when thinking about this question. It is clear in this movie some of the effects that long term stays have on patients. The effects are truly mind numbing.

2. Although I have never experienced being diagnosed with such a disorder, I feel that if I were I would begin to believe that I was crazy because stereotypical that’s what a mental disorder implies. The self-fulfilling prophecy concept from social psychology would come into play here if there were characteristics of bipolar disorder that I didn’t exhibit prior to finding out about them but did afterwards. This would make recovery much more difficult. I think it is also difficult when a person know the signs/symptoms and then realizes when they’re exhibiting because it reaffirms that they have the condition which can increase pessimism regarding the disorder and they’re ability to control it. This may cause them to give up on treatments and/or medication if they feel that they’re making no progress.

3. When people feel like they have superpowers, they don’t need medicine. They don’t need therapy. They don’t need advice. They don’t need help. This becomes a major problem for anyone working on the individual’s progression. Carla experienced this when she began throwing her pills away after her release from the hospital and also when she stopped sleeping and starting talking about her future so unrealistically. In order to help a person in this state, one must find a way to convince the individual that they do need medication, therapy or a combination thereof. That task can be a very difficult one. The following links are ones that address how to help someone during a manic episode including some individual cases. I found some of the advice very interesting.

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/bipolar_disorder_helping_someone_during_a_manic_episode-health/article_em.htm http://www.healthcentral.com/bipolar/c/17281/17766/talk-person-manic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJY-8bdpEs&feature=related

Also, once an individual is overcoming their manic episode and realizes that they were having one, they may feel like they have lost some of the progress that they made or convince themselves that they don’t want to have to continue going through the same cycles over and over again and commit suicide because of their disorder. That is a worst-case scenario but it can be hard to continuing fighting and having hope when its hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel which is what I believe many individuals with bipolar feel if/when they decide to end their life.