Psychotropic Medications in Mental Health Nursing: An Overview

This essay explores the use of psychotropic medications in mental health nursing, examining their role in treating various conditions such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. It delves into the controversies surrounding their overuse, potential side effects, and the impact on patients, particularly those with intellectual disabilities. The essay highlights differing perspectives on the effectiveness of these drugs, with some studies suggesting potential harm from long-term use while others emphasize their importance in managing symptoms and improving patient outcomes. Furthermore, it addresses the challenges faced by mental health nurses, including limited resources, risks of patient violence, and difficulties in patient compliance with medication, underscoring the need for comprehensive care and support within the healthcare system. The paper also discusses the impact of substance abuse on mental health treatment and the need for further research on the effectiveness of psychotropic medications in this context.

Running head: PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 1
Mental Health Nursing and Psychotropic Drugs
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PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 2
Introduction
Psychotropic drugs are known medications that are used to treat mental illnesses.
Psychotropic medication can be described as those drugs that affect behavior, thought,
perception, and the mood in an individual. There has been a concern about psychotropic
medication in general and antipsychotics that they are overused to people with mental illness,
especially those living with intellectual disability, mood disorders, and post-traumatic stress
disorders. Psychotropic drugs exist in a broad category and treat a variety of conditions. These
drugs work by adjusting the level of our brain chemicals. Some of the medication can cause
severe side effects, and they require special monitoring by the healthcare givers. These
medications include those that are commonly abused and those that are prescribed to a patient by
a health care professional (McAllister-Williams et al., 2017).
The legal psychotropic is classified into antidepressants, mood stabilizers, stimulants,
anti-anxiety agents, and antipsychotics. Some of the conditions that psychotropic for treatment
includes; depression, sleep disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. These
medications are essential in our daily lives because mental health issues and wellbeing are the
concern of everyone in society either directly or indirectly. Therefore, there have been several
debates and arguments from the researches regarding the use of psychotropic drugs for treating
people who live with mental illnesses. This essay is going to discuss the controversies that have
been raised by different researchers concerning the use of psychotropic drugs. The paper will
also discuss the challenges that are faced by healthcare practitioners, especially registered nurses
who take care of the patient with mental illnesses who show unethical behaviors as a result of the
disease (Alvares, Quintana, Hickie & Guastella, 2016).
Controversies over the Use of Psychotropic Drugs

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 3
Some of the severe mental illnesses (SMI) may facilitate earlier deaths (10-15 years
earlier) as compared to the general healthy population in Australia. Mental health nurses have an
important responsibility in improving the psychological and physical health of these people. A
cross-section survey was conducted among the developing countries to investigate attitudes,
clinical practice, perceived training, and confidence necessary to promote physical health in
people with mental disorders. This survey involved around seventy percent of registered nurses.
All nurses showed positive towards the promotion of the physical health of people with mental
illness. The registered nurses showed an attitude in encouraging education on sexual health
issues to the patients. The respondent reported that mental illness acted as a barrier to many in
promoting physical health. Other nurses suggested a need for education on smoking cessation
and cardiovascular health (Robson, Haddad, Gray & Gournay, 2013).
Another approach in Australia in Southern Adelaide Local Health Network showed that the
Maastricht model working with the Auditory-Verbal Hallucination (AVH) could help individuals
with hearing voices as part of mental disorders. This followed after a courageous young woman
who asked for the use of the approach to treating her AVH after there was no impact after the use
of polypharmacy approach. This proved that psychotropic medication had no value to the patient
who suffers from hearing od voices as part of their mental disorders. Afterward, there was the
introduction of the new auditory therapeutic model to work with voices in the mental health
systems to enable a recovery-oriented and unpretentious trauma-informed approach for the AVH
in the healthcare system in Australia. (Fossen & Stoeckel, 2016).
Some studies argue that antipsychotics, especially those of long term use, does more
harm than the benefits it has to patient. Some researchers raised concerns that psychotropic
medication has toxic effects on the patient, and they have significant benefits to the patient

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 4
within a short period. As these concerns became more popular, some articles within the
mainstream media suggested that the patient suffering from mood disorders and schizophrenia
get well without using the medication (Pasina et al., 2016). Montejo, a psychiatrist, argued that
psychotropic drugs help in controlling sleep disorders. Sleeplessness is experienced by many
patients with depression and anxiety disorders, and without using psychiatric drugs, they can’t
sleep for several days. This is very harmful to their wellbeing because sleeplessness can lead to
further deterioration of their cognitive (Montejo, Montejo & Baldwin, 2018).
Inappropriate use of psychotropic medicines can lead to wastage of resources and cause
unnecessary suffering, which may cause death or other, mental related illnesses. According to
Aguglia et al., (2019), most of the patients reported that medication made them feel better, and
they were able to control their moods and behaviors than when they were not using the drugs.
In a study that aimed at investigating the patterns in usage of antidepressants, including
other prescribed psychotropic drugs among patients requiring a short-term treatment, data for the
patient who had been admitted for 12 months was obtained and analyzed. The data was collected
from various clinical files of several healthcare facilities, which provide behavioral therapies and
treatments of mentally ill persons. For a patient with more than two admissions, only the first one
was considered. These patients had presented different types of mental disorders. Some were due
to severe alcohol and substance misuse. The patients who had mental disorders due to substance
abuse were psychiatrically stable, such that not all of them required psychotropic medications for
detoxification (Gulla, Selbaek, Flo, Kjome, Kirkevold & Husebo, 2016). The others whose
condition had gotten worse, the clinicians prescribed certain psychotropic which could curb their
behaviors. The prescribed medication was recorded during admission. The fact that some
patients could get well without the use of drugs shows that the psychotropic medications are not

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 5
compulsory in the treatment of some mental disorders (Santos, Resmini, Pascual, Crespo &
Webb,2017).
The use of the medications depends on the level of the illness of an individual. Analyses
were made, and consultation from several clinicians was conducted to evaluate the effect of the
prescribed psychotropic medication for the withdrawal of some violent and unethical behaviors
demonstrated by various patients. Some of the clinicians argued that patients with mental
disorders should undergo several guided interventions and therapies before one can determine
the type of medications to be administered to him/her. They supported their argument with
evidence that the psychotropic drugs could lead to risky side effect to some of the mentally ill
individuals who could get well after undergoing several interventions and therapies with proper
supervisions from delegated nurse without the use of drugs (Janus, van Manen, IJzerman &
Zuidema, 2016).
In another study carried out by Foulds and Mulder to evaluate the high levels of
psychotropic medication, the most commonly used drugs were polypharmacy, quetiapine, and
antidepressant. The patient with substance abuse disorder was prescribed to disulfiram at 10.7%
for those who did not adhere to the admission. The female patient had a greater likelihood of
using antidepressants during the primary diagnosis. There was an early result of the medication,
both positive and negative. The negative side of them composed of severe side effects while the
positive represented complete healing of the patient. According to Foulds et al., the study
showed a notable pattern in the use of psychotropic medication. However, there was a lack of
evidence that these medications are effective for the individual who was addicted to alcohol and
substance abuse. For instance, current meta-analyses showed that the antidepressant therapies

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 6
had a negligible effect on the alcohol use disorder patient who experienced symptoms of
depression (Foulds, Rouch, Spence, Mulder, & Sellman, 2016).
In addition, concurrent use of psychotropic drugs and other illicit drugs, especially those
associated with sedative effects, can affect individual alertness, cognitive, and psychomotor
functioning. The habit increases the risk of several harms like motor vehicle accidents and
injuries. While it is not necessarily wrong to use psychotropic mediation like antidepressant and
quetiapine to treat addiction, it may express information that the use of drugs is an effective
solution to an individual’s social and personal challenges. Currently, there are no studies that
have investigated that total withdrawal of the potential psychotropic medication is safer for the
patient with substance use disorders. This shows that there is a need for more primary research to
shed light on whether the potential benefits of current psychotropic prescription in the current
population overweigh their risks (Murray et al., 2016).
Some researchers in Australia have widely criticized the pharmacology of psychotropic drugs.
The argued that the majority of these drugs change the functioning of the brain of a person,
which result alters one’s moods, thinking, and behavior. They indicated that the operation of
psychotropic drugs works similarly to those of the commonly abused drugs (Pollak et al.,2016).
Commonly abused drugs include marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. These drugs
interfere with the normal functioning of the mind, and lastly, result in mental illnesses. Relating
the psychotropic drugs with such abused drugs shows they cause more harm to the brain more
than treating it (Birkenhäger-Gillesse et al., 2018). Those who oppose the use of these drugs in
treating mental illnesses say argue that the drugs are supposed to heal the disease itself, just like
other standard drugs and not only the symptoms. This means that these drugs should not be used

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 7
to treat persons who have mental illness as they interfere with emotional and cognitive behavior
(Ozaki, Katsumata & Arai, 2019).
Challenges Faced by Nurse who use the psychotropic Drugs to Treat mentally ill
Individuals
Mental health nurses are also called psychiatric nurses. These psychiatrist nurses face
many problems while taking care of mentally ill persons. These mentally ill individuals can
cause harm to self, to other patient or even to healthcare providers. Therefore, adequate resources
are required for the psychiatric nurses to work efficiently (Dixon, Holoshitz & Nossel, 2016). In
many healthcare systems of several countries in the world have limited resources in their metal
healthcare facilities. The cause a lot of challenges to both healthcare professional and the public
and leads to complexities in the treatment of the patient with mental disorders. Challenges in
mental health nursing happen in various situations (Delaney et al., 2018).
One of the challenges is that the number of services and beds for the patients re limited.
This owes to the government due to the downsizing of the economy and cutbacks. This remains a
significant challenge to the nurse caring for a mentally ill person such that it not an uneasy task
to convince someone with a mental disorder that there are no sufficient beds or to make two
mentally ill patients share. These are the issues that may impose danger to a nurse in that the
patients sometimes turn even violent and can injure the nurse. Limited beds and services can
reduce the opportunity or discourage the applicants from applying for the field practice, and also
it may not have a client who may wish to bring their metallic ill patients the mental healthcare
centers (Hailemariam et al., 2016).

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 8
Nurses working in mental healthcare institutions are exposed to the risk of bodily harm
by violent patients. This may cause anxiety to the nurses because it is not easy to predict when
the patient intends to harm them. The female nurse also suffers in these healthcare facilities; for
example, when working in men’s ward, there is a risk of rape, and one has to careful while
attending to them (Badu, O’Brien & Mitchell, 2018). The other challenge is that around 60% of
the mentally ill patient does not admit that they have any kind of mental disorder are they are
reluctant to take medication. In this situation, a nurse is forced to take other measures like
coercing or sedating the take the psychotropic medication. There is a challenge of psychological
exhaustion and overworking to the mental health nurses (Ellis & Alexander, 2016)
The mentally ill patient behaves abnormally, and it is difficult to handle them most of the
time; hence a nurse undergoes a lot of stress. The new staff of nurses acquires a training program
and education on the issues they may come across while working in mental healthcare center’s
so that they can be prepared early enough. These nurses require sound support from the
community and the government to enable them to endure the fears and stress they experience
while they take care of the patients. The fear come in especially while administering
psychotropic medication to a patient who does not accept that he/she is mentally ill and it
requires an external force or convincing power (from a family member) for the patient to take the
required drugs (Oranye, Arumugam, Ahmad & Arumugam, 2016).
Conclusion
The literature review in this paper has discussed the controversies that have raised from
the different scientists who have researched psychotropic drugs. The easy has emulated different
views from many studies concerning the use of psychotropic medications in treating the metal
related issue. Some of them have argues that psychiatric mediation has a severe side effect on a

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 9
person, while others said that they are best in treating mental disorders. The researchers have
demonstrated that the use of health intervention and behavioral therapies are the best methods for
such disorders. According to the different arguments that have been raised by the researchers, it
can be concluded that medical interventions such as behavioral therapies should be applied to
individuals before recommending them for psychotropic medication. The treatments should be
based on the level of mental destruction of a person to avoid ridiculous side effects. The easy has
also identified and evaluated the challenges faced by the registered nurses who take care of the
mentally ill patient through administering the psychotropic medications to them. The mentally ill
patient can cause harm to the healthcare practitioners and also to themselves. Nurses working in
the mental healthcare centers are required to be extra careful while giving medications to those
patients because many of them do not accept that they have mental illnesses.

PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF NURSING 10
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