Erikson’s Psychosocial Model for Well-Being

As per the psychosocial hypothesis, every individual experiences eight phases of progress over our life expectancy, from the earliest stages, i.e., from infant through late adulthood. As per Erikson (1963), trust is the premise of our progress during the earliest stages of life such following birth to till a year. Along these lines, the essential role of this stage is trust versus doubt (Sokol, 2009). This essay is going to present an understanding of psychosocial paradigms that can be implemented throughout the lifespan of service users to improve their quality of life. Here the essay has selected Erik Erickson theory in which the essay will demonstrate that how the psychosocial stages described in this theory can be applied in the care plan to promote the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of people with MND (motor neuron disease).

Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was an understudy of Freud and developed his hypothesis of psychosexual advancement by highlighting on the implication of ethnicity at the time of training for child nurturing and encouragement and highlighted about three phases concerning grown-up improvement. Psychosocial; stages presented in Erik Erickson’s theory can be applied in real context to promote the lifespan development of people (Syed and McLean, 2017). Through implementing the concept of this theory, people can not only improve their mental, physical and emotional wellbeing but also develop strong interpersonal skill such as judgemental skill, analysing ability, decision-making ability and self-dependence. According to his hypothesis, we reconcile on cognizant resolutions in our day to day life and these judgments centre on meeting certain traditional and social needs instead of physiological ones. People are spurred, for instance, by the requirement to sense that the globe is a reliable spot to inhabit, that we are proficient individuals, that we can commit to civilization, and that everybody has agreed on an important quality of life (Tamanna and Tassimova, 2019). These are being referred to as all psychosocial issues. Erikson separated the life expectancy into eight phases. In each stage, we have a significant psychosocial undertaking to achieve or emergency to survive. In the modern clinical field, many psychotherapists prefer to use this theory in terms of promoting holistic development of patients in which patients are provided with the care and support that they need to develop healthy habits and improve their living standard. Modern health professionals apply the eight phases of Erick Erickson’s theory in terms of improving the ability of services users to combat with complex health challenges that not only assist them to manage their health and wellbeing independently but also improve their thoughts, decision and perception (du Plessis and Stones, 2019). Eric Erickson’s theory allows care providers to make the positive transformation of thoughts, ideas and values of service uses which is important to improve the quality of living of people. Here the phases will be talked about for everyone as the investigation proceeds on every time of the life expectancy, yet here is a short outline is given below:

Psychosocial Stages

Trust versus question (0-1): the newborn child must have fundamental needs met predictably to sense that the globe is a reliable spot (Syed and McLean, 2017).

Autonomy versus shame and doubt (1-2): little children who can roam around have freshly discovered opportunity they like to practice and by being permitted to do as such; they get familiar with some fundamental autonomy (Abrutyn, 2019)

Industry versus inferiority (6-11): kids going to school centre around achievements and start making examinations among themselves and their friends.

Identity versus role confusion (puberty): youngsters in this age attempt to increase their feeling towards the way of life as they try different things with different jobs, convictions, and thoughts (Proyer, 2018).

Intimacy versus Isolation (youthful adulthood): During the age of 20s and 30s most of the individuals are committing personal intimate relationships for the rest of the lifetime.

Generativity versus stagnation (middle of adulthood): This is the characteristic of muddle adulthood in which people are more likely to prefer proper time management while performing any task (Abrutyn, 2019). They either become concerned with guiding the next generation and helping others or become stagnant and self-centred.

Integrity versus Despair (later phase in adulthood): It is Erickson’s final psychosocial stage that represents the characteristics of late adulthood (Proyer, 2018). By reaching the final stage of life, people look back to their past times and reflect on their experiences, performances and activities. They evaluate whether their activities and preferences during the past period were useful that improved the quality of their life or they wasted their time in performing useless activities that pose an adverse impact on their life (Bland and DeRobertis, 2020). At this stage, people form a retrospective glance to look back to their preceding period.

In the modern clinical field, psychotherapeutic care approaches based on the above-mentioned staged are widely used to make an effective care plan for patients suffering from Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Through applying Erickson’s psychosocial stages into clinical context, health professionals can develop a person-centred and holistic care strategy for treating MND, in which patients are not only provided with proper mental and physical support but also, they are provided with proper health education that improves their ability to conduct proper self-management. As mentioned by Jones and Stewart (2016), through using Erickson’s theory, it is possible to improve decision-making, thoughts, problem-solving skill, communication skill and analysing skill of patients. Additionally, through using this theory, care providers can allow patients to reflect on their past experiences that will assist them to determine their strength and weakness. Moreover, emotional expertise is the most required assessment for those patients suffering from psychological or cognitive problems (Ridenour and Zimmerman, 2019).

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The therapeutic care approaches that should be taken into consideration for the betterment of the patients are:

Supporting them by the way they are in their present conditions

Providing them with necessities to self-direct

To work on the difficulties of dying patients with the aid of spiritual discussions

To work upon their working and adapting capacities

The essential requirements for the success of the up taken care approach to involve:

Schedule, appropriate environment, detailed knowledge about the physical and cognitive limitations caused due to MND.

From the above-mentioned discussion it can be concluded that through using psychosocial theory, it is possible to improve the quality of life and mental and psychosocial wellbeing of people. In the modern clinical field, health professionals prefer to use Erickson theory, as it has eight psychosocial stages that can be applied into care plan of patients with MND to improve their decision making, analysing ability and judgemental approach. Moreover, Erickson’s psychosocial theory is useful in knowledge development of patients with mental illness that assist them to manage their health and wellbeing thereby make positive lifespan development.

References:

Abrutyn, S., 2019. Toward a General Theory of Anomie The Social Psychology of Disintegration. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 60(1), pp.109-136.

Bland, A.M. and DeRobertis, E.M., 2020. Maslow’s unacknowledged contributions to developmental psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(6), pp.934-958.

du Plessis, C. and Stones, C.R., 2019. The use of unusual psychological theories in psychobiography: A case study and discussion. In New trends in psychobiography (pp. 209-227). Springer, Cham.

Glover, T.L. and Kluger, B.M., 2019. Palliative medicine and end-of-life care. In Handbook of clinical neurology (Vol. 167, pp. 545-561). Elsevier.

Larsson, B.J., Nordin, K. and Nygren, I., 2016. Coping with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; from diagnosis and during disease progression. Journal of the neurological sciences, 361, pp.235-242.

Lulé, D., Pauli, S., Altintas, E., Singer, U., Merk, T., Uttner, I., Birbaumer, N. and Ludolph, A.C., 2012. Emotional adjustment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Journal of neurology, 259(2), pp.334-341.

Rabbitte, M., Bates, U. and Keane, M., 2015. Psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches for people with motor neuron disease: a qualitative study. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration, 16(5-6), pp.303-308.

Ridenour, J.M. and Zimmerman, B., 2019. The evolution of psychological testing at the Austen Riggs Center: A theoretical analysis. Journal of Personality Assessment, 101(1), pp.106-115.

Sokol, J.T., 2009. Identity development throughout the lifetime: An examination of Eriksonian theory. Graduate journal of counseling psychology, 1(2), p.14.

Tramonti, F., Bongioanni, P., Di Bernardo, C., Davitti, S. and Rossi, B., 2012. Quality of life of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Psychology, health & medicine, 17(5), pp.621-628.