Low self-esteem is when someone doesn’t feel confident in their self and dont thrust their actions-it can have a long-lasting effect on someone’s mental health if they so not speak about it to others or try and gain confidence without caring of other people’s opinions.
Low self-esteem is common in health and social care settings as the duty of carers is to make sure that patients is getting the right treatment and feels comfortable within the environment and vice versa. For example in a nursing home a resident could have a low self-esteem because they believe that because they have some kind of disability, they are not able to carry on everyday life activities e.g. standing u form bed without the help of a carer) they are useless and view life as being futile. This way of thinking will affect their views on life and how they see their selves. Low self-esteem can also happen in a school environment-for example in a secondary school a student feeling low about their self because they are not as academic as other students in the school and therefore feel as being a failure because they are not able to achieve good grades to make their parents proud. Moreover. Low self-esteem will affect the student mentally and emotionally and could leads to mental health issues such as depression. A way that staff and parents could support the student is by making them feel valued and show them their capable by always reassuring them that they care about them no matter what happens.
A final example of low self-esteem is in a hospital setting-a GPs feeling low about himself as they have a big decision to make regarding a patients well-being and he/she is pressured in ensuring that every patient and client receives the right treatment and gets the best advice from the GP. A GP low self-esteem could be also caused by clients rudely addressing to them about their conditions as the treatment that they got did not help with the I medical problems this therefore will make the practitioner feel unvalued as some people forget that there are humans and have a life outside the medical worlds.
References
- Types of Communication in Health and Social Care Settings
- About Self-Esteem – Mind
- The Role of Carers in Supporting Suicidal Recovered Patients with Low Self-esteem – US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
- Assessment and Treatment of Low Self-Esteem in Adolescents – US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health