Psychosocial Disorder

Psychosocial Disorder
Usually, individuals choose therapy in the bid to cure psychosocial disorder as required by the medical practitioners. There is no guarantee however that these, therapy sessions will work. According to medical dictionary psychosocial disorder is a mental illness usually caused by certain life experiences, as well we disturbed cognitive and behavioral processes. A therapist who focuses only on the normal session process and techniques are more likely to fail; this is according to research done by Doctor Scott Sells on Undercurrents. This paper seeks to determine practice perspectives and practice theories or models used by Scott Sells in his article to help the disturbed patient(Maria) and her family.
QUESTION 1
There are various practices that therapists are required to apply, for them to achieve their target of success in treatment. Not all patients are easy to treat, and not all are treated by the time they come to the end of their therapy period. However, as seen from the article by Scott Sells, a therapist should try by all means possible to ensure the patient receive their all.
Every Psychosocial disorder has several practice theories that each counselor employs in helping their patients and the family members of the patients. Some of the theories used are; environmental or system theories, Grief and loss theories, social support theory and human developmental theory (Ene-Obong et al. 2013). In this article by Scott, all these theories seem to have been used for effectiveness.

However, this paper will discuss only two and show instances in which they are used. Doctor Scott Sells uses the social support theory to do his psychosocial assessment Maria’s situation; he argues that lack of the total family involvement in the therapies were the major contribution the failures encountered from their previous sessions. Doctor Sells major move is seen when he goes to where Mari’s father and brothers bowl every Friday to try and convince them to attend the sessions. He manages to convince them, and this becomes very helpful. When they all attended the first session, Scott explains to them the benefit f them coming together and how hard it was to figure out all the causes of Maria’s condition. From the first session with the entire family, Doctor Sells say she found out some early stage causes of this disorders. He, therefore, had the chance to show both parents how to work together for the first time to stop Maria’s violent reactions.
Doctor, Scott Sells also uses “Grief and Loss theory” to assess Maria’s eating disorder among other disorders she was suffering from. He figured out that Maria’s eating disorder began just about the time her grandmother died. It is evident from the article that the grandmother was a very important figure in the children’s life and therefore very dear to them. However, when she died they were not allowed to talk about her, never went to her funeral and also never visited her grave site. The doctor explains diagrammatically, how this entire occurrence contributed to the disorder. Maria’s grief bottled up inside her, she also blamed herself for the death and yet she was not allowed to express it. As a result; she found a way of distracting herself with food. The family also avoided their grief by concentrating on Maria ((Ene-Obong et al. 2013).
Far from all the theories the doctors/ therapists use certain practice perspectives to assess and stamp out disorders. From the article, Scott uses some practice mechanisms such as; problem-solving practice model and task-centered practice. In trying to reach a conclusion of what was ignored during the past therapy sessions, that is, trying to establish the undercurrents, Dr. Scott Sells, applies the “Strength-Based theory” where he tries to establish the underlying truths to help p he deduce the right means to solve this problem. This happens when he asks the parents to try and think about how the whole problem started and how they dealt with it at that early stage. From all the brainstorming he figured out the causes and deduced a proper plan. In trying to reach his final goal, he applies the task-centered approach. Dr. Sells struggles through rehearsals with the entire family. He includes role playing and acting. This, he says, is meant to create new undercurrents for the family; The establishment of the new undercurrents is a healing process. The family is said to have managed, and they did few more visits for maintenance purposes.
QUESTION 2:
This section of the paper is of the paper is meant to evaluate Maria in the context of performance assessment and social support assessment. Assessment according to chapter eleven is the serious thinking procedure in which an employee reasons from the info to attain at functioning hypotheses and cautious decisions. The assessment process helps socio-therapist to develop a proper course of action or plan about the client’s disorder type.
Performance assessment is a kind of assessment that deals with the analysis of the general behavior of the patient. Through the article, there are behaviors that can be used to evaluate Maria’s disorders. The acting out the tantrums at the early stage is one of the acts that can be used to evaluate the cause of Maria’s emotional disorder (Ene-Obong et al. 2013). Through this act, the family decided to alienate themselves thus causing her developed a feeling that she hated. Maria develops the act of punching hole through the walls whenever she was denied whatever she wanted. Not being able to discipline her and make her stop this in time was the another mistake done by the parents. Had this been done earlier, maybe she would have been better.
Performance assessment requires these individuals to involve themselves in the healing process. They must be willing to engage themselves if they are to be better at the end of the entire process. Maria was ready to go through the process. However, her attitude was that she was incurable. She believed by defeating the four doctors; her disorders were far too gone. The same approach was seen in her father. The doctor struggled to change this and thus was able to help her. This assessment is self-based; the patient is assessed based on their acts, personality, and attitudes.
Not only is performance assessment used but also, social support systems. Social support if the feeling that one is cared for and that they can have help from other people either friends, family, and the doctors. Also, that one is part of a support network. These supportive resources can be informational, companionship, financial and emotional.In the article, Maria can be assessed from the social aspect. Maria had no right relationship from the brothers who tried most of the time to avoid her due to her tantrums. Whenever she started the tantrums and the acting up, they would ignore her. This made her feel ignored and less loved in the family (Avery& Mellinger, 2010). The feeling that one does not care for has a real toll on the emotions and personality in general. Maria also had this feeling that her grandmother’s death was her fault. During the session she it is seen that she blamed herself in a word “if I had been well maybe she would still be alive.” Her father’s lack of hope is another show that Maria was not getting all the support from the family, especially during her therapy sessions. It took a lot for the father to attend the first meeting where Doctor Scott had to go all the way to the place he used to bowl.
Maria started getting better when the entire family started becoming supportive. The family sessions helped boost her self-esteem. It was through these sessions with the family member that she got to learn that all the disorders were not her fault. She also got an assurance that then family loved her and that they would walk through the recovery process with her. Another assurance Maria gets is that the therapist was willing to help her with her problem. The commitment that the therapist had to bring the family in together was an assurance that no other doctor ever gave her and this time she was convinced that the therapy might just work, and after the first session, there was progress even though there was a relapse they were assured of help at the end of the period.
It stands out that a good social support system and a good performance assessment is the key to solving the problem with disorders. They make the patient enthusiastic to see the outcome. These processes also reveal the truth to these patients and give them a new hope that they all require after all hope is lost. We see that through the entire process, all that Dr. Sells was trying to do was reassure Maria and her parents that she would get better only if they all worked together.
QUESTION 3:
This section of the paper uses Sells article and chapter 12 of the course to explain objectives that a social worker aims to achieve and to account for the goal of each objective. Each therapist has a list of the target they intend to make, and any who doesn’t have a target is bound to fail.
From Maria’s situation there are objectives any therapist would gladly focus on:
Insight: This is the most shared agenda that therapist might have on the list. Here, the therapist struggles to explain to the patient the primary cause of the symptoms he or she is experiencing. The therapist afterward has the goal of ensuring that the patient fully understands this insight and ensure that some form of relief is visible in the patient. The therapist can achieve this by convincing the patient that the problems can be solved and that the solutions though might take time will be reached in the long run. Insight is also aimed at self-understanding. When one gets to what causes their symptoms, they get to why and try to understand why they are programmed that way. This will assist in self-understanding and help these individuals cope with their personality. Recommendation to Maria would be to learn more about herself and to develop ways in which she would be able to counter all that she doesn’t like about herself through self-acceptance and acceptance that she is loved for who she is.
Self-Esteem: Another objective is self-esteem. Most patients suffering from these disorders lose their self-esteem. They begin to see them as not worthy of anything. Most of them feel alone and try to stay away from because they feel different. The act of alienating themselves more often than not ends up causing more problems. Those suffering from low self-esteem will always engage in acts that destroy them; alcoholism becomes one major aspect. In Maria’s case, it was overeating, and that resulted to overweight. The goal of this is to restore the self-esteem. Once a therapist realizes this, he works towards restoring self-acceptance and finally to try and cure the problem. (Ene-Obong et al. 2013).
References
Avery, B. E., & Mellinger, M. (2010). Data collection for assessment.
Ene-Obong, H. N., Sanusi, R. A., Udenta, E. A., Williams, I. O., Amigo, K. M., Chibuzo, E. C., … & Davidson, G. I. (2013). Data collection and assessment of commonly consumed foods and recipes in six geo-political zones in Nigeria: Important for the development of a National Food Composition Database and Dietary Assessment. Food Chemistry, 140(3), 539-546.