21 - Understanding the Context and Dynamic Social Processes of Mental Health Treatment 

Summary

This chapter focuses on mental health utilization, commonly referred to as help-seeking. It focuses on the social processes involved in responding to mental health problems and if, when, and how individuals receive care from a wide range of people in the community-their friends and family, physicians, mental health specialists, alternative healers, the clergy, Web sites, and life coaches. The chapter considers how the fiscal and organizational arrangements seen with changes in the American health care system, particularly the expansion and more recent contraction of stringent managed care strategies, affect how mental health care services are allocated and what this means for people and professionals responding to illness. In the Network-Episode Model (NEM), individuals are seen as pragmatic users with commonsense knowledge and cultural routines who seek out and respond to others when psychiatric symptoms or unusual behavior occurs.