Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 48

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Mental health services are available worldwide. However, they differ by country in how available they are as well as the nature of the services offered. In countries in which individuals have a higher income, such as the United States, Canada, England, Germany, France, Japan, and Australia, there are many more mental care workers, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, than in countries with lower income such as India, China, and much of Africa. Figure 1.3 shows the number of mental health professionals throughout the world. This map illustrates the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and social workers per 100,000 people in the country.

High-income countries have the greatest number of mental health professionals, and low-income countries the least. Figure 1.4 shows the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and social workers by income level. The governments of about one-third of all countries do not have a specific budget for mental health. In many countries, informal networks of families, friends, and other social networks are utilized to care for those with mental illness.

Figure 1.3 Where Are the Mental Health Workers Available for Those With a Mental Illness?

Source: Shekhar Saxena, Graham Thornicroft, Martin Knapp, and Harvey Whiteford, “Resources for Mental Health: Scarcity, Inequity, and Inefficiency,” The Lancet, 8 September 2007, Vol. 370, Issue 9590, Pages 878–889. Copyright © 2007, with permission from Elsevier.

Figure 1.4 Do High-Income Countries Have More Mental Health Workers?

Source: Shekhar Saxena, Graham Thornicroft, Martin Knapp, and Harvey Whiteford, “Resources for Mental Health: Scarcity, Inequity, and Inefficiency,” The Lancet, 8 September 2007, Vol. 370, Issue 9590, Pages 878–889. Copyright © 2007, with permission from Elsevier.

Thought Question: What are some ways mental health care professionals in both higher- and lower-income countries can work together to increase the availability and quality of mental health resources in the developing world?

In thinking about our evolutionary history, we can consider how one basic human process developed in relation to an earlier one. For example, in the same way that pain can be seen as a warning system to the body to protect it from tissue damage, anxiety may have evolved to protect the individual from other types of potential threats. In fact, an evolutionary perspective has led to neuroscience research findings that social processes such as feeling rejected use similar brain circuits as those processes involved in physical pain. Further, many of the outward expressions of social anxiety parallel what is seen in dominance interactions in primates. Submissive monkeys avoid contact with more dominant ones, just as humans experiencing social anxiety avoid more dominant individuals. Thus, one hypothesis would be that anxiety may have its evolutionary origins in dominance structures. If this were true, we might expect to see some relationship to sexual instinctual processes as is the case with dominance. Indeed, social anxiety begins to show just prior to the onset of puberty—around 8 years of age. Of course, this merely shows how evolution may be related to anxiety. The evolutionary perspective can help us think about the roots of psychopathology as well, and it will be a recurring theme of this text.