Communication Skills

Running head: COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Communication Skills
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
1
Communication is one of the crucial factors in addressing the issue of mental health
among the patients so that their conditions can be addressed in a well manner. The
interpersonal skills and knowledge of the health care providers are very essential when
delivering care to a mental health patients. An effective communication only can help the
patient to share his or her concerns to the care providers in a well manner (O’Toole, 2016).
Therefore, if the nursing personnel use a good communication skills while delivering care to
the patients, the patients will not feel any hesitation to share his or her problems with the care
providers (Mehrabian, 2017). In this essay, the case study of Kirra is described who is 20
year old and recently she is facing problems regarding body weight and mood swings.
Recently, she is observed that, her body weight is reduced and she had lost her appetite. Kirra
is living with her mother, stepfather and younger brother and she has not any pre-diagnosed
medical problems. Kirra also observed that her father also recently started to drink alcohol
due to his loneliness and Kirra is quite upset for this incidence. As Kirra has not any friend
outside her family, she also started to feel lonely and she had lost interests in her favourite
activities such as drawing and painting. In addition to this, Kirra also had withdrawn herself
from her study. Kirra was not even ready to talk with the counsellor about her problems.
1. To build rapport with the client or mental health patients, the counsellor should
follow a few techniques. Firstly, the counsellor should apply the active listening skills
while communicating with the patients as this will make the client feel that the
counsellor can understand the problems and it will make the patient feel free. In
various studies, it is observed that, the active listening process is quite effective in
building rapport with the patients. The counsellor should treat the patients with
adequate respect as providing importance to the patients will allow the patient to tell
their problems. In addition to this, the counsellor may follow the communication style
of the patient and this will help in building rapport with the client (Mehrabian, 2017).

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
2
When, speaking with the client, the counsellor should also introduce herself or
himself as this will make the environment free for the client. According to the study
of Tremayne ( 2014), it is reported that disclosing information of the counsellor by
herself or himself will allow make the patients more comfortable. Hence, the
counsellor can use the aforesaid processes during building rapport with the Kirra.
2. As the patient is not willing to talk with the counsellor, the counsellor may apply the
non-verbal communication strategy for communicating with the patient. In this
communication strategy the counsellor will try to interpret the body language and the
facial expressions of the patients during any statements or incidents stated by the
counsellor (Warnecke, 2014). The body language may include the eye contact such as
avoiding eye contact or staring, facial expression such as smiling, anger, frowning ,
clenching, raising of eyebrows of the patients. In addition to this, the counsellor
should also look for the voice of the patient during any kind of verbal communication
and the counsellor should identify the accents, tone and volume of the patients as this
will help the counsellor to identify the proper strategy to deal with the patient. The
body movement of the patient can also be assessed by the counsellor ( Doolen et al.,
2014). In this case study, it is observed that, Kirra is not interested to talk with the
counsellor but she had very upset during talking about her father’s alcohol addiction.
The counsellor should assess such cues during communicating with Kirra in non-
verbal communicative way. In addition to this, it was observed that, Kirra only had
mentioned a few things about herself and the counsellor must listen to those words
attentively. In addition to this, the counsellor can use the touch strategy as a part of
the non-verbal communication (Mehrabian, 2017). However, the counsellor should
take permission before touching the permission. This implementation strategy will
help in breaking the barriers between the nursing personnel and the patients can feel