Jonathan’s Mental Conditions (Essay Sample)

a) Based on the information provided, identify the disorder which Jonathan is likely to have. Explain your answer with the essential DSM-5 diagnostic criteria and the symptoms illustrated by Jonathan. Define Positive and Negative Symptoms in this disorder. Classify Jonathan’s symptoms into positive and negative symptoms. (500 words)
Jonathan is suffering from Schizophrenia Spectrum which is a disorder that separates reality which fantasy. One believes of things that are not existing in reality. They create pictures in their head this look that they are real, but only real in their heads. They present feeling out of experiences of the individual suffering the disorder, and may have symptoms close to those of anxiety and depression (Bowie et.al, 2010). Thus the individual loss contact with reality. Persons having the disorder would want to exclude themselves, and at ties may be seeing things that do not exist in reality.
The main symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech, and disorganised behaviour. When we look at the case of Jonathan, he is not in touch with reality. He creates images and hallucinates of his boss setting cameras everywhere. He even gets to a case of thinking that books have his pictures. Due to the fear of job loss, he is even changing his speech and is yelling at people. He locks himself in his room and excludes himself, due to the feel that he is being spied on. He talks to customers strangely and is changing his talking behaviour which is a major characteristic of this kind of a disorder. He even gets to think that books have photos of him being viewed by the police. He is yelling at night from the hallucinations, and he locked himself up after thinking that people are suspicious of him. He lacks initiations, and is less of speech through exclusion and locking himself up.
Besides having this kinds of symptoms, the disorder has a positive side. This includes; excess or distortion of normal behaviour including hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech, and disorganised behaviour (Hans et.al, 2004). However, it also has negative experiences to it including; absence of normal behaviour in the individual, flat emotional expression, alogia, avolition, and asociality.
From the case of Jonathan, we can be able to classify his symptoms to positive and negative symptom. His positive symptoms include; hallucinations, disorganised speech and disorganised behaviour. While as the negative symptoms include; Alogia, and asociality. This is because, Jonathan is hallucinating by thinking that books have his picture which is needed by the police. He also thinks that there are cameras everywhere and he is being followed. This form of anxiety lead him to thinking that all places are filled with cameras and that he is being spied on. He does not want to be helped and is suspicious of everyone. He expresses alogia as his speech is seriously reduced and he locked himself up. He has a disorganised behaviour and he is yelling at people. The alogia causes him to thinking that he cannot confide on anyone and thus he has to be a lot since he sees all other persons like spies.
B) What is diathesis-stress model? With evidence from literature and research findings, explain how this model can explain the etiology of Jonathan’s disorder. (500 words)
This is a model that stresses for a link between the genetic and environmental factors that could lead to mental health disorders (Laursen et.al, 2007). The model alleges that there is an interplay between this genetic and environmental factors to causing the disorder. As presented in the figure below, the model alleges that the genetic factors are acquired factors this would include the parental and birth complications (Mortensen et.al, 2010). This two combined results to brain vulnerability. Environmental factor including the lifestyle, and the people around including the work being undertaken, create stress which could push the vulnerable mind into Schizophrenia.
Thus it is evident that the environment is a great factors to casing the mental disorder childhood (Dalén, 2015). For Jonathan, his stress mainly amount from environmental factors. From a genetic composition, we can say that Jonathan developed the stress complication from early. He felt he was not good enough which made his brain vulnerable. Now after getting employed he is faced with environmental stress. He is loaded with work and has to take up the heavy duties. He also has to cope with being monitored at work which makes the stress unbearable and push him to Schizophrenia disorder.
We can simply see from how he starts to hear strange voices telling him that he is not good, this is as a result of a vulnerable brain that is being compelled to stress which is environmental in nature as it comes with the work pressure. He is afraid of making mistakes, and since he cannot take it anymore he resigns. He is not even confident with his parents and he is suspicious of them. Thus he feels everybody is a threat and he needs to isolate himself.
c) With evidence from literature and research findings, describe a suitable treatment planwith appropriate therapy/ies or community services for Jonathan. Elaborate your treatment plan with appropriate reasons. (500 words).
This kind of disorders can be treated and thus Jonathan can be cured form his disorder. There are different approaches that can be adopted. One is the pharmacological approach (Angermeyer, 2000). Jonathan could be mediated and use drugs such as antipsychotic drugs which would help him ease the symptoms of hallucination, and delusions which are sever for his case. Jonathan is far from being real. He is having hallucination with relation to his work. He even locks himself since he feels that all persons are a threat to him. This medication would help ease this hallucinations and thus he would be able to cope with the situation, he will no longer exclude himself, and he will talk to people normally without yelling at them. He could thus make use of the conventional or the novel drugs for the treatment. I would recommend the use of novel antipsychotics since they have less side effect, and show better recovery.
I would also recommend for psychosocial approaches (Ross, 2014) for Jonathan. First I would call upon the family to help Jonathan recover. This will be referred to as family therapy. Research has shown that families offer a lot of social support to the affected individuals and thus could be a strong pillar for the patient’s recovery (Angermeyer, 2000). Thus the parents of Jonathan would be of great help. This would be by talking to him, as well as engaging him to keep him active and distracted. I would also recommend for social skills training. Jonathan is still young and thus he has a lot of energy and he could be engaged in skills development. He can get to technical trainings and skills development so that he can get engaged. He will also spend most of his time developing his skills, thus he will be able to manage stress. This will also be an opportunity for him to become bolder, and be able to handle different forms of