Effective Communication in Mental Health: A Case Study Essay

This essay examines communication skills within a healthcare context, specifically addressing a case study involving a 20-year-old client named Kirra experiencing issues with body weight, mood swings, and family dynamics. The essay explores strategies for developing rapport with the client, including active listening, respecting the patient, and adapting communication styles. It delves into both verbal and non-verbal communication techniques, such as interpreting body language and utilizing touch appropriately. The essay also addresses potential psychological and socio-cultural barriers to effective communication, such as the client's social isolation and anxiety, and proposes methods to overcome these challenges, including motivational strategies and encouraging social support. Ethical considerations, such as patient confidentiality and informed consent, are discussed, along with the importance of maintaining professional standards. Furthermore, the essay suggests inter-professional treatment approaches, including referrals to a dietician, psychologist, and social worker, while acknowledging potential challenges like miscommunication within a multi-disciplinary team. The essay concludes by emphasizing the critical role of effective communication in delivering quality care and addressing ethical dilemmas in mental health treatment.

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

1COMMUNICATION SKILLS
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).

2COMMUNICATION SKILLS
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

3COMMUNICATION SKILLS
that he or she is given respect. In case of Kirra, this strategy may be used as she is
distressed and is not feeling well at all. This strategy may make her feel good and she
may agree to speak with the counsellor (Mehrabian, 2017).
3. In this case study, it is observed that, kirra is very upset and she is withdrawing
herself from her favourite activities such as painting. Moreover, she had no other
friends other than her family and thus she was feeling lonely and she did not
communicate with others generally. So, during the delivery of care, the counsellor
may face the psychological barriers in the way of effective communication. As she
also had, withdrawn herself from her degree course, Kirra had become socially
isolated and thus the counsellor may face problems during the communication. The
anxious condition of the patient may also create barrier in the way of effective
communication in between the counsellor and the patients (O’Toole, 2016). In this
case study, it is observed that, the Kirra is very disturbed due to the condition of her
father and she is also feeling very lonely due to lack of proper social support. So, such
condition may create barrier in the way of effective communication in between Kirra
and the counsellor. The counsellor can motivate her to do Kirra’s favourite activities
such as painting and drawing and in addition to this, the counsellor may motivate
Kirra to join her bachelor degree course so that she can have social support from her
friends as it will help to reduce her loneliness. The counsellor should try to establish
a verbal communication strategy so that Kirra can express herself more. Therefore, if
possible, counsellor may tell some motivational stories to Kirra so that, she can be
motivated about her life. The counsellor may tell Kirra to initiate treatment process of
her father and the counsellor may ensure that with treatment her father will be
completely all right (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). By using such strategies
the counsellor can reduce the barriers of communication.

4COMMUNICATION SKILLS
4. In the case study of Kirra it is reported that, the client has provided the consent form
for this process. However, she was hesitating to take treatment. In such scenario, the
counsellor should ensure the patient that, he/she will not provide any details of the
patients to any other persons other than the family members of the patient as the
family members are the primary care giver of the patient. In this case of Kirra, this
ethical considerations can be maintained as she only had family members to take care
of herself. In this case scenario, the patient consent issue is partially maintained. In
addition to this, the nurse should maintain the nursing professional standards while
providing care to the patients. The study of Sisti, Segal and Emanuel ( 2015), showed
that, ethical issues should be maintained in the mental health treatment process in
order to improve the care process. In this case, the patient confidentiality is the
primary ethical considerations of the counsellors for Kirra.
5. From the case study of Kirra, it is observed that, the patient has problems of weight
loss recently and her BMI is 18. In addition to this, the case study also suggested that,
Kirra had lost her appetite and she became very upset when she found that , her father
had become alcohol addicted. Moreover, she had no friends apart from her family
members. Hence, Kirra might be referred to a dietician as she had difficulties in eating
and due to this she lost her weight. So, a dietician can easily address this problems
(Venditti et al., 2014). In order to, address the issue of sadness, she should be referred
to a psychologist who can address this problem. On the other hand, in order to provide
social support to the patient, a social worker can be included in the treatment process (
Cross & Cross, 2015). In case of Kirra, it can be used as she did not have any social
interaction. During this process, again the issue of confidentiality come into scenario
as more number of people are included in the treatment process and so it is very
important to maintain the confidentiality. During this inter-professional treatment

5COMMUNICATION SKILLS
practice, the issue of miscommunication can act as challenges. Due to presence of
multiple members in the treatment process of chances of miscommunication is very
high and it may also affect the patient outcomes (Foronda, MacWilliams &
McArthur, 2016). In case of Kirra, these problems may arise during the inter-
professional communication process.
Hence, it can be concluded that, effective communication is one of the crucial factors
in delivering care to the patients and in case of Kirra, it was observed that, due to the
treatment process, there may be various ethical issues which can affect the treatment
process. The ethical issues and challenges of inter-professional communication is
mentioned in this essay.

6COMMUNICATION SKILLS
References
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