Mental Health

Published on 14/03/2015 by admin

Filed under Emergency Medicine

Last modified 14/03/2015

Print this page

rate 1 star rate 2 star rate 3 star rate 4 star rate 5 star
Your rating: none, Average: 0 (0 votes)

This article have been viewed 1313 times

35

Mental Health

Psychiatric problems can emerge or worsen in response to the demands of wilderness experiences. Even in the absence of psychiatric disease, travel produces some level of stress in everyone. Psychodynamic issues develop in most groups and threaten to derail those without a plan to deal with them. Management of emotional problems in the wilderness, including the use of psychotropic medications, both in people who have preexisting psychologic difficulties and in those who develop new emotional problems in the wilderness, is outlined in this chapter.

Modern interpersonal theory suggests that most healthy adults cope with stress by flexibly using different coping styles, but that all adults develop an inflexible coping style under extreme stress. Individuals vary with regard to the magnitude of stress they can endure before innately settling into one of these styles, which was developed in infancy as a response to caregivers. The key to successfully intervening once one of these coping styles becomes inflexible is to challenge the core belief rather than reinforce it, respond to the core belief and not the behavior displayed, and to avoid reinforcing the coping style.

1. Moving toward others:

2. Moving away from others:

3. Moving against others: