Troopers Foundation - Health And Advocacy Strategies Essay.

Write a research report on health and advocacy strategies.

The foundation’s name

Many athletes face diverse mental issues including stress, depression, panic disorder, and mental health problems among others (Batterham et al. 2015, p. 258). These problems arise because of the expectations that their managers, fans, and family have on them in cases they fail to meet them. It is for this reason that our foundation comes into life with the aim of helping these athletes deal with these issues effectively. The foundation has its best objectives and programs laid out that aid us in the direction that we are aiming to achieve.

In order to meet the Australian context, we had to come with a name that is common and fits every member of the society. The particular name of the foundation is the Troopers Be the Mate You Need.

The name Troopers comes from the Australian phrase that perfectly describes the person who has endured a lot of hardships and strains so as to achieve the ambition they have. This term is commonly used within our Australian jurisdiction. Such people have a determination, hope, are strong, and brave due to the way their journey has shaped their lives. On the hand, the term mate has been used in the name description of the foundation. According to the Australian context, a mate is a phrase popularly known among the males to be loyalty or friendship that people have among one another.  

The Troopers Foundation is formed with the basic aim of promoting the consciousness of the mental difficulties that the general public and athletes, in particular, go through. As indicated earlier, the foundation has several goals and objectives that it aims at meeting in the future. However, these goals can only be met if the relevant bodies are involved in advocating the relevant changes. The primary options that we aim at achieving after the foundation has set its cause include the provision of the opportunity to seek help, guidance, and personal aid to our customers. Since the public, family, and managers of the athletes impose too many expectations from these athletes, they end up suffering from mental disorders that kill them from the inside (Bauman 2016). It is for this fact that our foundation comes into light in the attempt of helping these persons from the social stigmatization. We aim at being the mate the athletes will ever want to seek help from when circumstances and/or situations force them to.

As described in the above section, we simply exist to aid the athletes and the general public, if need be, with the ways of solving the mental difficulties that they face in their lives. More so, this fact can be elaborated in the sections below.

We have set out a mission of developing and implanting useful and advanced programs that aim at aiding those individuals that face mental disorders. Even though the primary customers that we are targeting are the professional athletes, we also extend our services to the general public. These programs may differ from one client to another as different people have different issues that they find challenging. Thus, we are pointing at the mark of personalizing these programs according to the wants of the clients and the challenges they are facing. As we are aiming at including the sporting bodies in our daily operations, we aim at being the best foundation to be celebrated in the near future for its efficient aid to diverse people.

The foundation’s background

We do have a lot of objectives at the back of our minds that guide the services that we aim at delivering. These goals include the following as described below.

To start with, we are aiming at doing away with the social stigmatization that these athletes face when they fail to achieve the expectations that the public has from them. This objective will be achieved by the creation of the social communication platforms that promote conversation with our clients when they are in need. In addition, these social platforms will aid us in the creation of the awareness of the mental difficulties that these clients, and the general public, face. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), communicating with the mentally affected clients makes them feel as they are not alone in the suffering. Thus, talking about these mental disorders openly helps the athletes express their challenges (World Health Organization 2014, p. 13) resulting in us providing them with better solutions.

Secondly, we are aiming at the proper implementation of the flexible and effective prevention programs for our clients. There are many courses of mental disorders such as failure, injury, and emotional problems. The athletes face a lot of these causes in their daily training and mixing with other people. This is evident in the research that was conducted in Australia involving 224 elite athletes where 118 were females and the remaining 106 were men. The result indicated that 46.4% of these athletes faced one or another mental health problem (Amelia et al. 2015). However, the levels of mental disorders in the athletes were found to be in correspondence with that of the community. It is for this reason that we aim at projecting the Troopers Foundation to aid the athletes to recover from these disorders through the various mechanism (Lehr et al. 2016).

The third objective that we are aiming to achieve is to offer free of charge health assessment programs for these athletes either through face-to-face conversations or online chats (Areán, Ly & Andersson 2016). The reason why we are making it free is to attract to those who are suffering as some of these clients are very keen on where their funds go to. Thus, having no funds to waste, the clients will eventually find their way to seeking these services (Slade et al. 2014) as their professional sports’ associations will be included in the process.

The fourth objective that the foundation will be aiming to achieve is the installation of extra rehabilitation sessions for our clients. These clients will be given a chance to communicate with a professional mental doctor (Barr et al. 2016) if they are facing a sanction for professional misconduct. The advantage of allowing them to face professional doctors is that they will always have the chance to be assessed accordingly (Meyer et al. 2015). Thus, they will never have any cases of a low quality mental service being offered to them.

The fifth objective that the foundation has is to issue an educational facility where real life mental disorder survivors will meet with the athletes. The best part of this goal is that the athletes will have a real-life sample of how to live without such disorders (Mohammed et al. 2015). These survivors may offer them tips on how to live a mental disorder free life and how to overcome their current issues (Weiss et al. 2016).

Why we exist

Finally, our foundation aims at gaining the approval of the major sporting institutions in the attempt to cooperate with them over a long period of time. This action will not only allow us to prosper but also reach every athlete that needs any kind of assistance with their mental challenges. The approval of such partnership will, in addition, grant us a chance to promote the ways of preventing the causes of mental disorders to the athletes and the community as a whole (Williamson et al. 2016).

The primary clients that the foundation is aiming at are the professional athletes in the Australian jurisdiction. The reason why we are giving them the first priority is that they are viewed as role models by society. They are also forced to achieve higher expectations by their families, fans, and managers. Thus, they will always have mental disorders if they fail to achieve such expectations and have no one to help them out. In addition, we shall be extending our services to the general public and/or the community.

The foundation will be incorporating the established sports organizations such as the Australian Sports Commission, and Cricket Australia among many others. Involving these firms in our operations will enable us to reach professional athletes with ease.

There are different roles that we, the founders of the foundation, will play in making the objectives of the firm, and the foundation itself comes, into life. The four of us are Abel, Angel, Susan, and Joseph. Abel, who is specialized in effective communication, will be playing a role of communicating with the clients to know the real cause of the mental disorders. Angel will be involved in the assessment of how these patients are affected both mentally and physically as she is specialized in diagnosis. Also, she will be involved in the recommendation of ways to solve these disorders together with other professional doctors as she is qualified in the treatment of disorders. Susan will play a role in promoting the awareness of mental difficulties so as to attract more clients. Finally, I, Joseph, will be involved in the continuous assessment of the patients that we have aided in coping with their conditions. I am interested in post-trauma assessment more than any other role in the foundation.

We have already planned to install two programs that the foundation will be engaging in. They include the psychoeducation program and the wilderness therapy program.

This kind of a program will aim at educating the mentally affected clients and their families on how best they can prevent the causes of such disorders. This program will focus on the preventive measures only after they have been treated effectively.

This therapy will be either short or medium term program and it will be focused on the diagnosis of the athletes with a wide range of emotional and mental disorders (Kisely, Campbell & O'Reilly 2017). The program will simply offer the clients the best solutions to their problems and put an end to their poorly made decisions and choices.

The mission of the foundation

Conclusion

The Troopers foundation is aiming at becoming the best mental health foundation in the future through the above objectives and programs. By focusing on the professional athletes who suffer silently, as well as the community, we shall be able to effectively control these challenges. The stated objectives and the two programs are our driving agents towards attaining free mental disorder conditions in the Australian sporting sector.

References

Amelia, G, Kathleen, MG, Andrew, M, Philip, JB & Rosanna, S 2015, 'The mental health of Australian elite athletes', Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, vol 18, no. 3, pp. 255-261, Retrived from https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(14)00075-9/abstract.

Areán, PA, Ly, KH & Andersson, G 2016, 'Mobile technology for mental health assessment', Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, vol 18, no. 2, p. 163.

Barr, B, Taylor-Robinson, D, Stuckler, D, Loopstra, R, Reeves, A & Whitehead, M 2016, '‘First, do no harm’: are disability assessments associated with adverse trends in mental health? A longitudinal ecological study', J Epidemiol Community Health, vol 70, no. 4, pp. 339-345.

Kisely, SR, Campbell, LA & O'Reilly, R 2017, 'Compulsory community and involuntary outpatient treatment for people with severe mental disorders', Cochrane database of systematic reviews, no. 3.

Lehr, D, Geraedts, A, Asplund, RP, Khadjesari, Z, Heber, E, de Bloom, J, Ebert, DD, Angerer, P & Funk, B 2016, 'Occupational e-mental health: current approaches and promising perspectives for promoting mental health in workers', In Healthy at Work, pp. 257-281.

Meyer, OL, Saw, A, Cho, YI & Fancher, TL 2015, 'Disparities in assessment, treatment, and recommendations for specialty mental health care: patient reports of medical provider behavior', Health services research, vol 50, no. 3, pp. 750-767.

Mohammed, A, Sheikh, TL, Gidado, S, Poggensee, G, Nguku, P, Olayinka, A, Ohuabunwo, C, Waziri, N, Shuaib, F, Adeyemi, J & Uzoma, O 2015, 'An evaluation of psychological distress and social support of survivors and contacts of Ebola virus disease infection and their relatives in Lagos, Nigeria: a cross sectional study− 2014', BMC Public Health, vol 15, no. 1, p. 824.

Slade, M, Amering, M, Farkas, M, Hamilton, B, O'Hagan, M, Panther, G, Perkins, R, Shepherd, G, Tse, S & Whitley, R 2014, 'Uses and abuses of recovery: implementing recovery?oriented practices in mental health systems', World Psychiatry, vol 13, no. 1, pp. 12-20.

Spitzer, RL, Endicott, J & Franchi, JAM 2018, 'Medical and mental disorder: Proposed definition and criteria', In Annales Médico-psychologiques, revue psychiatrique, vol 176, no. 7, pp. 656-665.

Weiss, WM, Ugueto, AM, Mahmooth, Z, Murray, LK, Hall, BJ, Nadison, M, Rasmussen, A, Lee, JS, Vazzano, A, Bass, J & Bolton, P 2016, 'Mental health interventions and priorities for research for adult survivors of torture and systematic violence: a review of the literature', Torture, vol 26, no. 1, pp. 17-44.

Williamson, A, D'Este, C, Clapham, K, Redman, S, Manton, T, Eades, S, Schuster, L & Raphael, B 2016, 'What are the factors associated with good mental health among Aboriginal children in urban New South Wales, Australia? Phase I findings from the Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH)', BMJ open, vol 6, no. 7, p. e011182.

World Health Organization 2014, 'Social determinants of mental health', World Health Organization, pp. 12-43, Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/112828/9789?sequence=1.