Elena Jones
Mental health nursing, also known as psychiatric nursing, is a specialized field of nursing practice that involves the care of individuals with a mental health disorder to help them recover and improve their quality of life. Mental health nurses have advanced knowledge of the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric disorders that helps them provide specialized care. They typically work alongside other health professionals in a medical team with the aim of providing the optimal clinical outcomes for the patient. Mental illness can affect individuals of any age, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status. For this reason, a mental health nurse may need to work with many different individuals from various backgrounds. The most important duty of a psychiatric nurse is to maintain a positive therapeutic relationship with patients in a clinical setting. The fundamental elements of mental health care revolve around the interpersonal relations and interactions established between professionals and clients. Caring for people with mental illnesses demands an intensified presence and a strong desire to be supportive. Along with other nurses, psychiatric mental health nurses will intervene in areas of physical need to ensure that people have good levels of personal hygiene, nutrition, sleep, etc., as well as tending to any concomitant physical ailments. In mental health patients, obesity is not rare because some medications can have a side effect of gaining weight which can cause the patient to have low confidence and lead to other health issues. To fix this problem, mental health nurses are urged to encourage patients to get more exercise to enhance their physical health, along with their mental health by improving the patient’s confidence and lowering stress levels, improving their mental health which has been a focus for mental health nurses because many patients do not get enough exercise. Nurses may also need to help the patients with alcohol or drug abuse because mental health patients are at a higher risk for this behavior. Mental health nurses need to be able to communicate to patients about this. The alcohol and drug abuse could cause the patient to also have a higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases because alcohol and drugs can lead to more sexual behavior.
