Mental Health Nursing: Assessment, Stress Vulnerability Model, Recovery Oriented Practice

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

MENTAL HEALTH NURSING1
ANSWER 1
Mental health assessment is the process that is conducted by the mental healthcare
professionals that analyses the cognitive ability of the patients, especially their level of
attention, their behavior and their ability to remember things (Lobo et al., 2015). Multiple
researchers such as Mahendran, Lim and Kua (2015) has considered Mental State
Assessment as the tool that helps the mental healthcare professionals to analyse the attributes
of patients through their general behavior, their attitude, appearance, their thought process,
their speech, affect and ability to judge. Therefore, depending upon the observation collected
from the mental state examination, the provided case study would be analyzed. In the
provided case study of Munny Kaew (43), it was seen that his the first aspect of mental state
assessment, physical appearance indicates towards his loss of hope and his lost gait. It was
seen that he has appeared to the community clinical care in a proper attire which is loosely fit
and his posture was slumped on his chair and he avoided eye contact with the community
care professional. His complete attire indicated to the fact that he is unwilling to take care of
his grooming, his health condition and his diet and nutritional habits. Therefore, as per the
MSE, his appearance indicated towards apathy and lack of interest towards his family.
Further, the second aspect could be his speech, affect and his thought process (Kowalski &
Conn, 2017). His speech in the conversation with the health professionals was monosyllable
and he did not reply to the nursing professionals thoroughly throughout the session and his
affect indicated towards the constriction and depression, due to which his reactivity was
suppressed. His mood could be understood from his inability to construct a full sentence and
his lower self-esteem towards his life goals. Finally, he also refused t talk about his family
members and hence his poor thought process and judgment could also be identified from this
aspect (Neto et al., 2019).

MENTAL HEALTH NURSING2
Upon conducting these complete mental state assessment for Munny and aligning his
attributes with that of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, 5
Edition (DSM-V), the primary concern that could be identified is his persisting depression
condition (Ford et al., 2017). The DSM-V criteria mentions that individuals that shows a
sense of sadness nd hopelessness, loss tremendous weight and suffer from loss of appetite
should be considered as depression affected individual. In case of Munny, he also lost his
willingness towards his job after his boss’s negative remarks and he also lost interest to take
care of himself due to which his depression condition could be confirmed (Ford et al., 2017).
Therefore, depending upon this evaluation, it could be said that his decreased social
interaction, his persisting hopelessness and his increased feeling of fatigue indicated to the
fact that he is suffering from the severe complications of depression. Finally, it could also be
mentioned that as per the DSM-V criteria, the individual suffering from mental health
complications could be considered to be affected with depression, if he/she is suffering from
this health complication for more than 2 weeks and exerts eight symptoms mentioned in the
criteria. Hence, Munny was considered to be affected with depression based upon the MSE
and DSM-V analysis.
ANSWER 2
The stress vulnerability model is the biological model that helps to develop an
understanding about the cause of the mental health disorder (Duckers et al., 2016). The stress
vulnerability model helps to analyse the specific characteristic of the mental health illness
and the manner in which it is associated with other physical health disorders (Segrin et al.,
2016). It should be noted here that the model is established on two characteristics which
comprise of the existing genetic vulnerability trait to acquire the disorder and the stressors or
the challenges that lead to the dearth of a mental health disorder (Segrin et al., 2016).
Considering the first characteristic or the genetic vulnerability trait to acquire a mental health