Mental Health Awareness Month: Social Issues

State of dependence caused by frequent and regular use of drugs, alcohol, or other substances. It is characterized by uncontrolled craving, tolerance, and symptoms of withdrawal when access is denied. Habitual use produces changes in body chemistry and treatment must be geared to a gradual reduction in dosage.

Act by which the legal relation of parent and child is created. An adopted child generally assumes the rights and duties of a natural legitimate child. Similarly, the rights and duties accompanying natural parenthood generally accompany adoptive parenthood.

In biology, cumulative changes in an organism, organ, tissue, or cell leading to a decrease in functional capacity. In humans, aging is associated with degenerative changes in the skin, bones, heart, blood vessels, lungs, nerves, and other organs and tissues. The branch of medicine that deals with the disorders of aging in humans is geriatrics.

Most people have suffered from the actions of bullies. This systematic attack on an individual can have a massive effect on a person's self-esteem and development. No one deserves to be bullied . . . Victims of bullies may feel that somehow they deserve to be bullied, that perhaps they are of less value than other people. The constant bullying and teasing often reaffirms this low self-esteem.

The deliberate injury of a child. Child abuse can take several forms: neglect (including failure to provide adequate shelter, food, or medical treatment), physical abuse (including beating and poisoning), emotional abuse (including verbal abuse), and sexual abuse.

Services provided for the care of disadvantaged children. Foundling institutions for orphans and abandoned children were the earliest attempts at child care, usually under religious auspices. At first the goal was to provide minimum physical subsistence, but services have been expanded to include social and psychological help.

Behaviour or action that is punishable by criminal law. A crime is a public, as opposed to a moral, wrong; it is an offence committed against (and hence punishable by) the state or the community at large. Many crimes are immoral, but not all actions considered immoral are illegal.

Conventionally understood as the state of being physically and/or mentally different from some assumed ‘norm’ of human corporeal and/or psychological functioning, the term applies to people with an impairment that supposedly limits their ability to perform activities in the manner taken as ‘normal’ for a human being.

Domestic violence, or intimate partner violence, is defined as a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors, including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks as well as economic coercion that adults or adolescents use against their intimate partners.

Elder abuse is a social and public health problem that affects over half a million abused elderly victims in the United States as well as their caregivers, family, and community institutions. Abuse results in physical, emotional, and mental angst for victims, some of whom are cognitively and/or functionally impaired.

Homelessness is the lack of residential shelter or the prevalence of that lack within a population. Homelessness has conventionally been conceived of as distinct from indigence . . . Having been redefined as a social and political problem, having attracted sociological attention, and having been subjected to a range of measurement and observation modalities, homelessness is now understood to include a range of profiles, dynamics, causes, and degrees.

In general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban populations expanded. The crowding of cities and factory towns by workers led not only to severe housing shortages but also to the deterioration of existing housing and the growth of slums.

Entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. High rates of immigration are frequently accompanied by militant, and sometimes violent, calls for immigration restriction or deportation by nationalist groups.

Well-being and soundness of mind, not only in terms of intellectual abilities, but also in terms of the capability to deal with everyday problems, and the capacity to get on well with other people and to form and sustain relationships.

Condition in which the basic needs of human beings (shelter, food, and clothing) are not being met. Over one-fifth of the world's population was living in extreme poverty in 1995, of which around 70% were women. Nearly 13.5 million children under five die each year from poverty-related illness (measles, diarrhoea, malaria, pneumonia, and malnutrition).

Act of granting sexual access for payment. Although most commonly conducted by females for males, it may be performed by females or males for either females or males.

Violence is an aggressive form of behaviour. It is an intentional act against another person. Generally, violence is a physical act, although it can take the form of bullying. It is illegal to threaten a person with violence. People can suffer mental damage from threats of violence as much as people suffer physical damage from physical attacks.