Mental Health Assignment: Case Study of Alison's Mental Health

This report presents a mental health assignment centered around a case study of a 38-year-old woman named Alison, who is experiencing depression. The assignment details the patient's background, symptoms including mood swings, sleep disorders, and suicidal tendencies, and the collection and processing of information from her medical history. It identifies the primary problem as depression stemming from divorce and the responsibilities of single parenthood. The report outlines the establishment of goals, focusing on nursing care and treatment, followed by a detailed nursing care plan that includes lifestyle changes, exercise, social support, dietary adjustments, and psychotherapy. The evaluation highlights significant improvements in the patient's condition after one month of treatment, and the reflection section offers insights into the learning experience of managing a patient with mental health issues. The assignment references various studies to support the approaches taken in the care plan.

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH ASSIGNMENT
MENTAL HEALTH ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Consideration of the patient or the situation................................................................................................2
Collection of information............................................................................................................................2
Processing the information..........................................................................................................................2
Identifying the problems..............................................................................................................................3
Establishment of proper goals.....................................................................................................................3
Taking action...............................................................................................................................................3
Evaluation...................................................................................................................................................4
Reflection....................................................................................................................................................4
References...................................................................................................................................................5

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Consideration of the patient or the situation
The given case study is about a patient of 38 years old woman, named Alison. She has come to
visit the general physician as she has been suffering from low mood. She is divorced and is the single
mother taking care of her two children. Her economic condition is also not much satisfying as she works
in one of the local supermarket and she is only responsible for taking care of her two children. In whole of
the interaction with the general physician, the patient was very depressed. She was crying while
discussing about her health issues with the general physician and even she had to use tissue papers to
wipe her tears.
Collection of information
The patient could clearly discussed about her past medical history. She mentioned that her sister
noticed her state of depression and she has come to visit the doctor as her sister forced her to consult a
doctor. She is suffering from depression since the past few months and it seemed to her that she was
pilling up everything, even she was mixing up her kids with everything else. Her medical history is
showing that she is suffering from mood swings. When she gets up in the early morning, she finds
everything to be black. Previously she used to spend a lot of time with her kids in swimming and playing
but at present, she spend whole of the day by sitting on the sofa. She has also been suffering from sleep
disorder, she takes much time to sleep after going to the bed. Previously she used to read story books but
now she spend most of the time in bed by watching and following the clock. At the morning she feels
tired without actually doing any work. At the time when her husband left her, she became very depressed
and one day she took wine and also took almost 12 paracetamol tablets out of depression.
Processing the information
According to the symptoms described by the patient, she has been suffering from mood swings,
tendency of tearfulness, reduction of energy in doing works, reduction in motivation, health weakness

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since the starting of the day, loss of appetite and ultimately reduction of weight, lack of concentration and
reduction in enjoyment and taking self-care. The patient has no shoe any history of medications before.
Even she had started suffering from depression after her husband divorced her. At that time only she took
12 paracetamol tablets, and after that her health conditions deteriorated. The actual pharmacologic
mechanism of paracetamol is unclear but the side effects are very effective. If excess paracetamol tablets
are taken then loss of appetite, vomiting, nausea, pain in stomach, sweating and confusion occur
(McClain & Peebles, 2016). The patient is suffering from such depressions that she has almost secluded
herself even from her near persons also.
Identifying the problems
Currently the main health issue that the patient is suffering from is excessive depression, which
was started since the time of her divorce and other reason of her depression is being over burdened with
the responsibilities of her children. The other problems arose because of the depression only which
includes lack of appetite, lack of energy from doing work. The negligence that the patient receives from
the society is making her more depressed than she was supposed to be (Blanner et al., 2015). After the
discussion with the doctor, she found that she is also suffering from suicidal tendencies.
Establishment of proper goals
The patient is suffering from depressive disorder, this has happened because of her past
incidences. She needs proper treatment and that also within a proper time span. As this case is a case of
mental disorder, the patient will take much time to get cured from the mental issues (Chiesa et al., 2015).
She needs nursing care for at least one month to improve her mental health conditions and also make sure
that that this care policy is working on her or not.

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Taking action
I have prepared a nursing care plan which includes all the approaches for care planning involving
changing the whole life style including exercises, social support, nutrition, sleep, reduction of stresses and
obviously providing the patient psychotherapy (Brakemeier et al., 2015). In the patient care plan, I fixed a
particular time of a day in which the patient used to do exercises. I used to ask her to move and mix with
her friends and family members (Ly et al., 2015). I also changed her diet plan which included more of the
sugary foods or more of the carbohydrates in order to increase her energy for doing work. Even complex
carbohydrates are also preferred. Adequate sleep are essential as it reduces the symptoms and it reduces
the sadness of the patient (Baumann et al., 2015). Along with me, the family members also supported the
patient in order to reduce the stresses. She was also provided with anti-depressant to reduce the mental
stresses (Musolino et al., 2015). I communicated with the patient politely so that she feels free to discuss
with me.
Evaluation
After the one month treatment of the patient, the improvement was evaluated. It was found that
the health of the patient has improved a lot. She was behaving much better than she was behaving at
present. The tearfulness faded away and she was looking rather a jolly person than she was before. She
has started spending more time with her children. Her appetite increased and also she started sleeping
much more time than she was sleeping before. So it can be said that the treatment came to be very helpful
and if she continues with this treatment for few more months then she would be cured completely from
the disorder of depression.
Reflection
From this experience of caring a patient suffering from mental issues, I have learnt many new
things which I was unknown to me before. This is the first time I took care of a patient suffering from
mental disease. I learnt about the medicines which a mental patient need to take, the exercise and the food

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habits which the important for the patient (Yarborough et al., 2016). I would have taken care of the
patient in a much better way if I had experiences in taking care of the mental patients.

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References
Baumann, A. J., Wheeler, D. S., James, M., Turner, R., Siegel, A., & Navarro, V. J. (2015). Benefit of
early palliative care intervention in end-stage liver disease patients awaiting liver
transplantation. Journal of pain and symptom management, 50(6), 882-886.
Blanner Kristiansen, C., Juel, A., Vinther Hansen, M., Hansen, A. M., Kilian, R., & Hjorth, P. (2015).
Promoting physical health in severe mental illness: Patient and staff perspective. Acta
Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 132(6), 470-478.
Brakemeier, E. L., Radtke, M., Engel, V., Zimmermann, J., Tuschen-Caffier, B., Hautzinger, M., ... &
Normann, C. (2015). Overcoming treatment resistance in chronic depression: a pilot study on
outcome and feasibility of the cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy as an
inpatient treatment program. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 84(1), 51-56.
Chiesa, A., Castagner, V., Andrisano, C., Serretti, A., Mandelli, L., Porcelli, S., & Giommi, F. (2015).
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy vs. psycho-education for patients with major depression
who did not achieve remission following antidepressant treatment. Psychiatry research, 226(2-3),
474-483.
Ly, K. H., Topooco, N., Cederlund, H., Wallin, A., Bergström, J., Molander, O., ... & Andersson, G.
(2015). Smartphone-supported versus full behavioural activation for depression: a randomised
controlled trial. PloS one, 10(5), e0126559.
McClain, Z., & Peebles, R. (2016). Body image and eating disorders among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender youth. Pediatric Clinics, 63(6), 1079-1090.
Musolino, C., Warin, M., Wade, T., & Gilchrist, P. (2015). ‘Healthy anorexia’: The complexity of care in
disordered eating. Social Science & Medicine, 139, 18-25.

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Yarborough, B. J. H., Stumbo, S. P., Yarborough, M. T., Young, T. J., & Green, C. A. (2016). Improving
lifestyle interventions for people with serious mental illnesses: Qualitative results from the
STRIDE study. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 39(1), 33.