How Mental Health Nurses Can Support Consumers and Families

Mental health nurses provide specialized care to people with mental disorders in different settings. They play a vital role in involving patients in treatment, setting personal goals, and advocating for their needs. This article discusses how mental health nurses can support consumers and families in Australia.

Running head: COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH
COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH
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1COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH
How mental health nurses can support consumer and families:
In Australia, the mental health nurses provides service in a highly specialized field and
they provide care to the people with need for different mental disorders. The central focus of the
mental health nurse is to provide medical and emotional support to the patients and their carers
such as family in order to resolve the mental health issue and encourage for personal recovery in
an effective manner (Health.nsw.gov.au, 2018). The mental health nurse provides service in
different settings as well such as, hospital settings, residential care, home based care and
community service. Hence they have the opportunity to interact with diverse people with
different mental health issue which allows them to understand the different aspects of mental
illness and provide quality care while ensuring patient safety in an effective manner (Robson et
al., 2013).
According to Pickard and Fazel (2013) there are various factors that impact on the mental
health of a person and contribute effectively to the development of mental disorder. Substance
abuse has been identified as one of the major risk factors of mental health that requires special
treatment and care from the mental health nurse in order to recover in an effective manner.
However, recovery in mental health is not always associated with complete recovery rather focus
on the effective management while setting proper personal goal and improve the ability to
achieve expected outcomes in order to live meaningful life (Slade et al., 2014). The mental
health nurses play an important role in order to involve the patients in the treatment and help
them to set personal goal and get successful achievement. Beside various pharmacological
treatment such non-pharmacological treatment has been found to be effective (Robson et al.,
2013).

2COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH
The mental health nurse mainly provide mental health assessment to identify the central
issue of the patient and potential factors that have led to the development of such issues. In this
regards they could use effective assessment tools such as mental state examination. It helps to
introduce effective treatment based on the specific issue of the patient (Health.nsw.gov.au,
2018). Next the mental health nurse could use their communication skill to interact with the
patient and communicate in order to encourage them to contribute effectively in the treatment
and foster the recovery. Further they communicate with the mental health specialist to inform
about the condition of the patient to identify the best practice that could help the patient to
recover from the mental illness (Robson et al., 2013). In addition the mental health nurse play a
vital role in advocacy behalf of the patients regarding their needs (Who.int, 2018).
Besides such medical needs the mental health nurses also focus to meet the
psychological, spiritual and social needs. They provide emotional support to the families of the
patient during transition period or life crisis. In addition the mental health nurses provide
adequate information to the patient and their families and educate them about the importance of
maintaining mental well-being so that they could understand the treatment process and involve in
recovery with their own consent. Such contribution of mental health nurses help the patient with
mental illness to recover in an effective manner and create awareness in the society to reduce the
prevalence of mental disorder (Health.nsw.gov.au, 2018).

3COMPLEX MENTAL HEALTH
References:
Health.nsw.gov.au. (2018). Mental Health Nursing. [online] Available at:
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/nursing/practice/Pages/mental-health-nursing.aspx
[Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].
Pickard, H. and Fazel, S., 2013. Substance abuse as a risk factor for violence in mental illness:
some implications for forensic psychiatric practice and clinical ethics. Current opinion in
psychiatry, 26(4), p.349.
Robson, D., Haddad, M., Gray, R. and Gournay, K., 2013. Mental health nursing and physical
health care: A cross‐sectional study of nurses' attitudes, practice, and perceived training
needs for the physical health care of people with severe mental illness. International
Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 22(5), pp.409-417.
Slade, M., Amering, M., Farkas, M., Hamilton, B., O'Hagan, M., Panther, G., Perkins, R.,
Shepherd, G., Tse, S. and Whitley, R., 2014. Uses and abuses of recovery: implementing
recovery‐oriented practices in mental health systems. World Psychiatry, 13(1), pp.12-20.
Who.int. (2018). [online] Available at:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/resources/en/Advocacy.pdf [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].