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Question: Nursing care in mental health
Despite of ongoing lectures and tutorials before and after the sessions, I understood that there exists a difference in the learnings and knowledge that I had on mental health. Across the world, the mental health services (Prince et al., 2007), progress towards meeting the challenge and needs have been slow in middle- and low-income countries (Saraceno et al., 2007). My thought process on mental health was different before and after attending the tutorials and lessons. The patients with mental disorders show diverse symptoms and behavior it is required to handle the patients carefully to avoid violent behavior and aggression. The learnings are described in the present paper pertaining to understanding and nursing care for mental health.
The term ‘mental health’ is defined as a state of an emotion that inculcates our passionate, mental, and social prosperity. Diverse barriers influence the mental health including, public health priorities, resistance to decentralization, challenges to the delivery of mental health services in primary health care settings, low numbers of trained professionals, and the lack of effective leadership. I had an opportunity to handle a male patient (age, 35 years) with major depression. The patient was with ‘moody’ behavior and not speaking frequently with peers, family members and friends. He appears to be with ‘alone’ kind of feeling. He neither responding to questions nor to general conversation. Therefore, as a nurse, I should know handling the patient’s behavior prior to initiation of treatment and should be able to handle the patient. I should conduct a thorough study on how the public from the vicinity of society is behaving. The extent to which the patient is following the instructions should be evaluated. However, the extent to which the patient obeys the compliance can be influenced by the poverty and socioeconomic status. In addition, the cultural background and religious beliefs etc also play a role in following the instructions. The migration of people from one region to other can contribute for the diversified cultural development too. For instance, the migration may fall into family and economic-class (Higginbottom et al., 2011). It is therefore axiomatic that nurses in these nations care for diverse ethno-cultural groups and that this may present challenges in respect of nursing care delivery.
As a nurse, I would involve in taking care for mental health from south India, the culture, religious beliefs are relatively vulnerable as the population is from diverse races (Anderson & Kowal, 2012). The culture of rural and urban public is entirely different. Most of the individuals are emotional and some are cardial despite of their educational background. The patient on whom I started the investigation is belonging to a minority group. I should respect the ethical and spiritual aspects of patient indicating the case sensitive. Therefore, the typical attitudes force me to learn and undergo for training. For instance, the personal values are different and directly influenced by social values. Some of the individuals are emotional in taking decisions and some are with inferiority complex. I notice that certain encouragement is required to prioritize the tasks, reduce the phobia and improve the decision-making capacity. The newer approaches should be focused in order to implement the evidence based practices. The care should be systematic utilizing an appropriate care model such as ‘transcultural nursing’. ‘Multiculturalism’ is one of the model can be applied for the people with diverse ethno-culture background. The social, scholarly, and moral development known as multiculturalism has been immensely powerful in mental health. Its capacity to reshape brain science has been because of its moral power, which gets from the engaging quality of its points of incorporation, and shared appreciation (Fowers & Davidov, 2006).
The development of the professional self is considered as the most essential component in nursing and in social work training (Esther, 2010). As a mental health nurse, I need to work with all ages of patients with diverse psychiatric complications including depressive disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia and personality disorders. The symptoms for each type of disease could be varied. Regardless of where a mental health nurse works, education is usually part of the job description. Nurses play a large role in educating patients and their families on their mental health diagnoses and how to manage their illnesses. They may also educate patients on medications they take and their side effects. Therefore, the continuous improvements in nursing skills can help in handling the patients. As I had undergone for training to learn skills in handling the mental health patients with diverse disorders. So, I feel that it is not an issue to handle the patients. It is possible to handle the patients and provide the intended care in terms of treatment. I had a chance to work in correctional facility other than intensive care unit. In addition, the major advantage is being able to help someone deal with a difficult diagnosis and overcome it. The limitation in mental health conditions can be difficult to work with at times. Sometimes I may become angry or aggressive towards other patients and staff, which can be stressful to deal with. Some patients show low recovery, which can be upsetting and sometimes even frustrating.
Considering afore mentioned merits and demerits, I would like to implement the reflecting skills that aid the individual with psychological disorders. I should focus on the client’s perspective in terms of listening and understanding the problems of patients. Some patients can express the symptoms verbally if they are well educated and able to express the symptoms and some cannot express verbally due to low education background and inability to express the symptoms via patient-centered communication. The main principle in using reflective skills involves identifying the individual's center message and offering it back to them in my own particular words. The compelling utilization of intelligent aptitudes can encourage investigation, construct trust, and convey acknowledgment and comprehension to the customer. From the implementation perspective a part from reflective skills, I would like to implement the settings by prioritizing the activities and improving the nursing skills in which I am deficit.
In conclusion, the handling of mental health patients is challenging to nurses. Multidimensional focus has to be given in handling the patients with varying mental disorders. Adequate skills are needed in handling and satisfying the patients. The skills improvement with periodic training can facilitate me in improving the skills. In addition, the training for the improvement of soft skills could facilitate me in handling diverse patients with varying complications. Of course, various components that may affect on need setting including, the mastery of the medical attendant; the patient's condition; the accessibility of assets; ward association; methods of insight and models of consideration; the attendant patient relationship; and the intellectual technique utilized by the medical caretaker to set needs. With experience, I believe that I could gain adequate expertise in handling patients with diverse diseases.
Anderson, H & Kowal, E (2012) Culture, history, and health in an Australian aboriginal community: the case of utopia. Med Anthropol. 31(5), 438-57. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2011.636411.
Esther, U (2010) Awareness of self-a critical tool social work education 29(5) 523–538 retrieved from https://www.bu.edu/ssw/files/2010/10/Awareness-of-Self-A-Critical-Tool.pdf
Fowers, B.J & Davidov, B.J. (2006). The virtue of multiculturalism: personal transformation, character, and openness to the other. Am Psychol. 61(6), 581-94.
Higginbottom, G. M., Richter, M. S., Mogale, R. S., Ortiz, L., Young, S., & Mollel, O. (2011). Identification of nursing assessment models/tools validated in clinical practice for use with diverse ethno-cultural groups: an integrative review of the literature. BMC Nursing, 10, 16. http://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6955-10-16
Prince, M., Patel, V., Saxena, S., Maj, M., Maselko, J., Phillips, M. R., & Rahman, A. (2007). No health without mental health. The Lancet, 370(9590), 859–877.
Saraceno, B., van Ommeren, M., Batniji, R., Cohen, A., Gureje, O., Mahoney, J., Sridhar, D., & Underhill, C. (2007). Global Mental Health 5: Barriers to improvement of mental health services in low-income and middle-income countries. The Lancet, 370(9593), 1164–1174