Introduction
Mental health problems constitute an important part of healthcare-related issues. People with psychiatric disorders are unique in that they face two major obstacles. First, their mental issues prevent them from living a full life. Second, they face a social stigma that distinguishes them from patients with no mental health issues. Public disapproval of people with psychiatric disorders hinders their treatment and recovery. Therefore, educating the public and patients on the ways of managing mental health problems is an essential component of improving the quality of healthcare. Understanding who the main stakeholders are and what resources are needed is essential in ascertaining the most appropriate course of action for improving mental health education.
Stakeholders
There are three types of stakeholders in this project: health practitioners who treat mental health patients, people with psychiatric disorders, and their close ones. Involved health practitioners refer to the entirety of professionals who provide healthcare to patients with mental issues (Bieber et al., 2022). People with psychiatric disorders are the main beneficiaries of the project, as they will gain the knowledge that will help them cope with their conditions on their own. People who are close to mental health patients will benefit as they will understand how to care for the patients, while the overall pressure will decrease.
Resources
Educating mental health patients and their family requires providing them with accessible information that would supplement follow-up care. First, it is important to partner with mental health charities, which provide free education services (Canady, 2021). Second, it is essential to establish social communities of people who need mental healthcare services. For instance, a team of social media experts can be hired that would post videos on YouTube and stories on Instagram with useful information. Subsequently, these people would have to be compensated based on the number of views their media attract. Third, it is necessary to make frequent open consultations with medical professionals. These events would require the implementation of fundraising, thus making the overall budget community funded.
Action Plan
Any community-based initiatives require corresponding public awareness and approval. Therefore, the first step is to launch a social media campaign advocating for helping mental health patients. Within one week, it is possible to contact people with such disorders and their families and ask them to share their current hardships on social media. The key to raising awareness is using the same hashtag that would indicate unity in implementing this initiative (Makita et al., 2021). The second step is to prepare online educational resources that would be checked by medical professionals and promoted by mental health charities, which should be completed within one month.
Conclusion
The third step is to build a network of individuals with similar problems on social media platforms, such as Facebook. As patients and their family members start to share their experiences, more health professionals would be invited to speak at streams, where they would give medical and psychological advice to patients and families. The timeframe for building this network is six months in total. The fourth step is the evaluation of the efficiency of the action plan, which should be done after six months. Enough data about the size of the community, the number of events involving health professionals, as well as the number of videos and post views will be available by this point.
References
Bieber, E. D., Philbrick, K. L., Shapiro, J. B., & Karnatovskaia, L. V. (2022). Psychiatry’s role in the prevention of post-intensive care mental health impairment: Stakeholder survey. BMC Psychiatry, 22(1), 1-9.
Canady, V. A. (2021). NAMI goes virtual, addresses ‘epidemic within the pandemic’. Mental Health Weekly, 31(2), 6-6.
Makita, M., Mas-Bleda, A., Morris, S., & Thelwall, M. (2021). Mental health discourses on Twitter during mental health awareness week. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 42(5), 437-450.