Since 1942, Didi Hirsh mental health services (2013) have been providing treatment to patient’s psychiatric disorder. It also offers the services to the individuals with substance abuse. It is located in southern California with 11 centers. More than 70,000 individuals are served in their clinics per year from Pacoima all the way to South Los Angeles.

Among the services offered includes psychiatric conditions, guidance and counseling to the teenage and adults and outreach to the community that has traumatic events. They also offer services in crisis prevention, delinquency prevention and youth at risk and family reinforcement programs. Additionally, they provide a 24 hour hotline services for cases of a  suicide crisis. It runs for 24 hours in seven days from the orange county to Santa Barbara. They also offer training to individuals in management of mental disorder together with guidance and counseling (Robbi, 2013).

The organization engages itself in special programs so as to benefit the community through their highly qualified workers. Among the special programme is the Armenity-Armenian community health and wellness. The adults have outpatient mental health services offered to them as well as the residential treatment services. For the school going children, they offer school based programme so as to identify with the major barriers to effective learning in schools (Robbi, 2013). Among the major contributors to ineffective learning includes anxiety, depression, substance abuse, bullying and significant family stress.

The organization also offer services to the military families which are most of the time resilient. They recognize that the children in the military families suffer from traumatic sadness, fear, anger and grief. It is due to separation from their parents and the field they are exposed to. With the help from Didi Hirsch, the children are able to thrive normally and attend schools to learn and perform just like other students.

Bipolar disorder

This is among other psychiatric disorders that Didi Hirsch mental services offer medical assistance. This disorder is sometimes referred to as manic- depressive illness. The disorder is characterized by changes in the mood of the individual from low depressive state to high levels of mania. The patients will find it difficult to finish a day to day duty during these fluctuations. The changes in the mood status may results in damage of relationships, career destruction and poor academic performance. According to the American Psychological association (2014), these mood fluctuations may be too overwhelming that the patients may choose suicide attempts.

Bipolar disorder being a life time disease can be controlled by medication and psychological counseling which is referred to as psychotherapy. The national alliance on mental illness (2014), reports that more than 10 million people have bipolar disorder in America. The incidence in both male and female is equal. The symptoms start to be evident from 15 to 25 years of age.

The patients may have different signs and symptoms depending on the mood . The symptoms during manic phase include; feeling of euphoria, increase in self confidence with impaired judgment. The patient may also talk excessively with racing thoughts. They are also very aggressive and may involve themselves in promiscuous behavior and substance abuse. The patients also have poor concentration that leads to poor academic performance. Additionally they squander money in the purchase of commodities that are not necessary for their life.

On the other side, during the depressive phase, the patients have a feeling of hopelessness and are in extreme sadness. They feel guilty that everything wrong is their fault that makes them have problems with sleeping. Besides, the patients have a problem with eating where some of them eat too much while other eat very little. Consequently, there is weight gain or weight loss accordingly. To add on this, the patients find not pleasure in any of activities they do. They are easily irritated by insignificant things like smell or noise and face difficulty going to school or to places of work.

Multicultural disparity may affect the diagnosis and therefore treatment of bipolar disorder. The clinicians may tend to confuse bipolar disorder with schizophrenic from certain ethnic group and in the younger generation. According to Sanches, (2004) the black African tends to have manic symptoms that any other ethnic group. In the same study, Sanches (2004) found no manic episode in individuals of Chinese origin. More manic symptoms were found in the Yoruba tribe from Nigeria. The different cultural peculiarity in the presentation of the bipolar disorder symptom may have a negative implication in the diagnosis. It may affect specific populations and cause mismanagement. Internationally approved instruments have been developed to be used in the diagnosis of the condition. It is called diagnostic statistic manual (DSM-IV). The instrument is reviewed after a certain period. Currently, there is the fifth edition that has all the symptoms for a clear diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

In conclusion, reference to the manual for diagnosis is essentially important. The clinicians are able to make the correct diagnosis regardless of the ethnic origin of the patient. Didi Hirsch mental services always refer to this manual when making diagnosis of any mental illness.

References

Erica, 2014. Didi Hirsch mental services. Retrieved from: www.didihirsch.org.

Mayo, 2008. Definition of bipolar disorder. Retrieved from: www.mayoclinic.org.

Sanches, 2004. Transcultural aspect of bipolar disorder. Bras psiquiatr 26(suppl III):54-6