Impact of Patient Behavior on Mental Health Carers: A Report

This report delves into the emotional distress experienced by mental health carers within a hospital setting, focusing on the impact of patient behavior and the challenges posed by staff turnover. The report examines a case scenario where a carer struggles with an increased workload and difficult patient interactions, leading to emotional strain. It explores both influencing and inhibiting factors contributing to the carer's distress, such as patient non-compliance with treatment plans and the complexities of managing patients with mental health conditions. The report highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between physical and mental well-being, emphasizing how the carer's own emotional state affects their ability to provide effective care. It also touches upon the skills needed for facilitating caring conversations and the significance of addressing the carer's own well-being to ensure quality patient care. Finally, the report offers insights into the strategies and methods that carers can employ to mitigate the emotional distress they face in their demanding roles.

MENTAL HEALTH

Table of Contents
Introduction and Setting of the scene...............................................................................................1
Introduction to the case scenario......................................................................................................2
Influencing and Inhibiting factors contributing to the situation......................................................3
Reflection Writing...........................................................................................................................5
3.) Confidence needed and the skills required to enable the facilitation of caring
conversations with those experiencing emotional distress..........................................................1
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

Introduction and Setting of the scene
The relationship between physical and mental well being plays a very important role as
both the factors are dependent of each other. When the physical state of a person will be better, it
will impact on their mental well being as well. When a person is healthy physically, chances of
the effectiveness of the mental well being also seems positive enough. When a person is already
sick, it affects the thoughts as well of that individual person (Cunningham, Dawes and Bennett,
2012). There are some associations in the physical as well as mental health which involves some
factors such as the poor mental health because it is one of the factors for making the physical
condition more complex. Emotional distress is considered as a situation in which the person goes
through a sort of feeling and it might be negative or false feeling. The negative feelings may
include anxiety, fear or suffering because of any other issue in life. There can be various
symptoms of emotional distress which includes lack of energy, more sleeping than routine,
smoking, drinking alcohol or doing substance abuse for forgetting the stress or taking a break
from the regular routine. The case scenario here will be that a carer is working in a hospital and
the hospital is going through employee turnover because of which they are very few carers left in
the hospital. As there are few people left in the hospital, a huge work load is on them only.
In many cases, the situations appear in a way that the carer itself goes under a huge
amount of emotional distress. These situations may include various factors such as the carer
giving improper attention to the patients because of high work load, that if there are very few
carers in the health care and a wide number of patients, in that case, it is obvious enough that the
carer may not be able to give proper attention to everyone. So, the patients may act different as
well, as the patients of mental health are not mentally strong, so they can act anything
deliberately to irritate the doctor. Although they might not be doing it intentionally, but because
of their presence of mind in this situation causes these things to happen. In such cases, the carer
may feel much depressed emotionally. A group of tasks has been given to a single person so that
most of the objectives can be achieved. So the carer has to look up to a few patients. Every
patient has different demand. Some of them are suffering from poor mental conditions so they do
not allow the carer to give them proper medications and treatment (Mumford and Roodhouse,
2012). This causes a stress factor in the carer because the person has to complete the
responsibilities, even if the patient is mis behaving or doing any abuse. The carer tries to provide
proper attention and support to the patients but in some case, the situation becomes complex.
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Some patients demand of food that they cannot eat according to their diet plan, in these cases
manipulating these for not eating it is a quite tough task. So, the report will be about the
emotional distressing factors through which the carer is going as the carer tries to complete all
the responsibilities but because of this behaviour of patients, the carer feels emotionally
distressed. Also, it includes some methods that the carer would have involved because of which
he could not have to deal with the factors that lead him to emotional distress (Kilanska and
Priest, 2014). The scene is that the carer was trying his best to complete the roles and
responsibilities by providing efficient care and treatment to the patients but in a health care,
various situations occur that can actually make the whole situation very complex and difficult for
the carer. In many cases, the patients do not cooperate with the carer and instead, try to irritate
the doctor or carer more because they are mentally sick. So, in such cases, the responsibility of
carer is to deal very patiently with them. In reply to that, the patients should also cooperate with
the carer in case if the carer is engaged with some other patients or any such situations, but some
did not cooperate at all. Then, it seems like a burden on the carer which further leads to
emotional distress. Although, after many such situations, the carer keeps trying to deal with the
patients very patiently as they must not be mentally well but after that also, there are some
annoying elements left. Instead of all such acts, the carer keeps trying to convince the patients for
medicine and further treatments. So, the report is about the emotional distress the carer goes
through from the behaviour of the patients dealing with mental health.
Introduction to the case scenario
The report is about a case scenario where the carer explains the factors because of which
the carer goes under a huge amount of emotional distress and the ways in which how it affected
them. As per the World health organisation as well, it says there is no consideration of health
without the mental health. It means that if the person is not strong mentally, then there are very
few chances that the person can be able to live a healthier and happier life because the mental
issues will not let them to live so. A poor and inefficient mental health can lead to various further
physical conditions and that too very chronic. Emotions also play a major role as a person with a
good emotional health must be aware of their thoughts, ideas and views but sometimes, a few
factors can occur because of which the emotional health of a person can get affected. As in this
case, as the carer has to deal with many patients dealing with different issues. The hospital is
suffering from a staff turnover, so there are very few carers left in the hospital, because of which
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this carer has allotted a few numbers of patients (Liyanage, Strachan, Penlington and Casselden,
2013).
As every personality is different, so every patient as well. The carer has been tired by
completing demands of each and every patient. As it is his responsibility, he is trying to focus on
each and every requirement of every single patient but in this case, the patients also should
cooperate to a level which they are not doing (Mahony, Klimchak and Morrell, 2012). This is
even more frustrating for the carer. Although the patients did not support and cooperated with the
carer because some of them would not be in that situation to understand and analyse that what
can be the impact of what they are ding. If some food item is restricted to the diet plan according
to the health condition of a patient, then how can the carer allow the patient to have that thing. It
can cause more complications to the health of the patient. Many times, the patients gets stubborn
and forces the carer to let them eat the specific food item. But, the carer did not allow any patient
to eat anything which is not in their diet plan. After this, the patients keep irritating the carer.
Along with it, mental condition of some patients is not well because of which they are not ready
to take medicines and proper treatments. Although this behaviour of the patient can be very
annoying but the carer tried to deal with the patience and instead of getting angry on them, the
carer tried to manipulate them so that they can take medicine and it can help them in getting
better.
Influencing and Inhibiting factors contributing to the situation
There are various factors in an organisation that can have an impact on the environment
of the work place and also on the mental well being of a person. As the carer must have been
gone through a variety of such features such as changing attitudes and behaviour of the patients
is actually very annoying but can be handled by patience. It is because sometimes the mental
condition of the person is not well and they do not take proper medication and treatment as
prescribed by the carer (Hennessey, Davies,and Fuller, 2011). May be they are not doing it
deliberately but their mental condition has been stated in a way that they actually start behaving
like that. They like it when the carer gets irritated because they want to irritate the carer to an
extent that they do not force them to take the medication. But the carer is aware of all their
responsibilities, so the carer does not lose any one chance to provide proper support and
treatment to the patient. In a hospital, there are variety of patients involved and everyone is of
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different mind set. Some patients are like the ones who deliberately do not follow the advice and
prescription of the doctor and they do it because they come from a different atmosphere and the
environment of hospital is very different as compared of the outside environment. Also, the
patient has to live according to the norms of the hospital authorities as even if the patient wants
to smoke and do any such related thing, they are not supposed to do in the hospital premises. It is
because there are some rules and regulations of the hospital and according to that only, the
patients have to live there. So, out of all these factors, some can act influencing and some can act
inhibitive (Ife, 2012).
Inhabiting factor can influence the care worker at the time of delivering the care services
to patient at the workplace. Due to this factor, some time, care worker and practitioner can get
frustrated to take the treatment of patient. This factor can hugely affect the care worker activities
and operation in the hospital (Boud, Cohen and Sampson, 2014). Due to this factor, health care
worker can unable to analyse the situation and actual problem within the health and care
organisation. As care worker have issue related to depression and high level of stress so as he/she
cannot able to understand the actual situation and problem of the patient. Due to this factor, it
can be said that care services and treatment is largely influence in the hospital. Thus, health care
experts should attend the training and development program and other personality development
workshop so as they can understand the issue of the patient and ignore the situation of emotional
depression and tensioned at the workplace (Armour. and Makopoulou, 2012). In addition to this
it can be said that health care experts should also adopt the self-practices and assessment so as
they can overcome the emotional depressed at the workplace. Apart from that it can be said that
inhabiting factor are those which can directly influence to the mind and body of the individual.
In this situation, these factor have largely influenced to the care workers as their behaviours and
attitude has changed according to the situation and he/she did not able to manage the large
numbers of patient at the single time and place. Due to the number of patient, he/she can get
irritate and frustrated. This situation has largely influenced to the care services and treatment of
the patient as they have not able to improved their health disease die to these factors of health
care worker (Babin, Carr and Griffin, 2012). There is a greater degree of impact that is analysed
on service users as wee. If the service provider, that is carer is not fit, in that case, it will be
difficult for them to get the services for which a carer is responsible. The intervention in that case
can be taken by the managers of mental health care department through giving proper leaves to
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the carer on time to time basis. Moreover, relaxation period after every 2 hours can also help in
reducing the impact.
The factors that have strong control over the nature and behaviour of the carer. A hassled
environment can leave the carer in emotional distress which. Further, the intensity of emotional
distress depends upon the amount of work the person has to handle in one day. The carer in the
case scenario have to deal with varied kind of patients who are dwelling with different mental
health issues. Carer requires calm and composite behaviour in order to deal with these kinds of
people. In order to deliver his duties, he also have to give night duties in the hospital due to
which he is not able to take sound sleep as well. It not only deteriorates his physical health but
also his mental health as well. He most frequently takes sleeping pills as his time cycle to sleep is
not fixed. It also makes his behaviour agitated and emotionally distressful. The atmosphere of
hospital where people with mental health live is quite different from that of other hospitals. It
also creates an environment of the hospital distressful. Continuous survival in distressed
environment makes the stay of the person as a carer ineffective and emotionally distressed.
Further, the carer is also involved in medicating the people and fulfilling their other
requirements as well. To fulfil this duty, he is required to wake up between the night which
makes him agitated and distressed regarding his job duties (Hattie, 2013). Further, in the day
time as well, in his shift, it becomes very difficult to fulfil the requirements of each and every
patient. Some of the patients with mental disorder are violent as well which makes difficult for
the carer to bring the situation under control. Moreover, there are certain other factors as well
which is affecting mental and physical well being of the carer. It includes inadequate amount of
sleep at night during night duties, affected behaviour due to spending majority of the time with
people suffering from one or the other mental disorder, Improper time division for intake of
meals and relaxation etc. These factors acts as a contributor in influencing the current situation.
Further there are some factor that can be considered while communicating with people who
suffere from the mental distress. Before communicating it is importan to understand the causes
of mental distress as per the given in the case scenario services provider is facing issues because
it required to handle patient who are suffering from mental problem and it is not easy to task for
individual to handle all of the them as they all demand different things. Further while
communicating it is important to avoid communicating those thing which can hurt an individual.
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Different ways through which health can be promoted can be communicated in caring
conversation
Reflection Writing
At the time of providing the treatment to the emotional distress people I have learnt lots
of things from them. I have played role to provide treatment to patients who are suffering from
mental stress. It is very important for me to understand the actual reason behind this situation so
in order to understand their situation I have spent lots of time with them. Firstly I have
communicated with patients related to their issue and reason behind their situation. In this
situation I have used my effective communication skill through which I have successfully
understood their problem. Furthermore, I have focused on the special facilities and arrangement
for mental stress people so as they may not face any difficulties at the time of taking treatment. I
was communicating with them as a friend and their close one so as I can effectively acknowledge
their issues. By this activity my interaction and analytical skill have been improved through
which I can easily understand the situation of patient in the health and care organisation in the
future. In order to analysing the response and activities of mental distress patient I have written
all actions of them on the paper so as I can understand their body language, feelings, reaction etc.
I have given my best affords to deal with mental stress patients. However, I have requirement to
improve some skill and ability in my personality so as I have developed systematic personality
development plan.
In order to live happy and healthy life it is very important to become mentally healthy. In the
duration of care delivery to mental patients, I have analysed that I have effective time
management skill as I have accomplished all task related to care services within a specific time
period. Further, I have also analysed that I have effective technical skill which support me in
preparing the report and record of patient with help of computer and other equipment. From this
profession of health care practitioner I have learnt so many things related to health care. I have
learnt about the different issues among the patient related to their health. Thus, from this study, I
have learnt that in order to deliver care services and treatment to mental patient, I did not
properly focus and I got frustrated and depressed in emotional manner. Being a care worker in
the hospital I have responsibility to deliver high quality of care services and treatment to the
patients who have mental illness. Due to this emotional distress I have unable to understand and
identify the actual issue of the mental patient and also unable to deliver the right medical care
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and medicine to them. In this situation I have to improve my personality and professionalism. In
order to address the situation and solve all problem related to my emotional distress I have to
develop a systematic personality and professional development plan. This plan are discuss
below-
LEARNING
OBJECTIVE/G
OAL
CURRENT
PROFICIENCY Ways to
improve
Future Use TIME SCALE
Communication
skill
I am very poor in
handling the large
numbers of
patient in a single
time because I
have ineffective
communication
skill.
In order to
improve my
communication
skill I will attend
workshop of
personality
development.
Further by doing
self practices and
self assessment I
can improve
communication
skill.
With assistance of
effective
communication
skill I can
effective
communicate
with patient and
understand the
issue.
1 year
Resilience skill I have very weak
resilience skill by
which my
awareness,
thoughts, fitness
has been
negatively
influenced. Due
to small stress I
am got huge
frustrated and loss
In order to
enhance my
resilience skill
within the health
and care
organisation I
have need to
attend training
and development
program and
seminar where I
This skill assist
me in improving
my working
capability and
ability within the
hospital through
which I will
effectively
understand the
actual issue of the
patient and
6 Months
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my thinking
capability. This
negatively
influenced my
personality and
professionalism
in the health and
care organisation
as I am unable to
understand the
actual
requirement of
patient and unable
to deliver right
services to them.
can learn
effective
knowledge and
ability about to
become
successfully
health care
practitioner and
doctor. With help
of training and
development
program I can
learn the skill to
deliver effective
services and care
to patient within
the hospital.
deliver right
services and care
to them. With
help of this skill I
can handle high
level of stress and
frustration at the
workplace.
Decision making
skill
I have very weak
decision making
skill because
mostly time I was
full of stress and
frustration that is
why I unable to
make the quick
decision about the
care services and
treatment of
patient.
In order to
improve my
decision making
skill I have to
attend the
personality
development
workshops and
seminars through
which I can
improve my
confidence level.
Further, by
conducting group
With assistance
of the decision
making skill I can
easily take the
decision about
care services and
treatment of
patients. With
help of this skill I
can easily take
the quick and fast
decision about the
treatment which
will deliver to
1 year
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meeting and
group discussion I
can collect
various views and
opinion about the
subject. This will
help me in taking
the quick and fast
decision about the
care services and
treatment in the
health and care
organisation.
patient in the
health and care
organisation.
Operational
related decision
can take by me by
help of decision
making skill. This
skill also assist
me in become the
successful doctor.
I can manage my
stress and
frustration.
From this above personal and professional development plan I have analysed that with help of
training and development program and seminar I can improve my existing knowledge an ability
about the care services. These program will help me in managing my depression situation at the
workplace.
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3.) Confidence needed and the skills required to enable the facilitation of caring conversations
with those experiencing emotional distress
To work as a service provider in the mental health hospital is not easy. As the carer need to
face lots of challenges while handling a mental people because of their behaviour and attitude.
As per the scenario there is increase in the emotional distress due to various reason such as to
fulfil the demand of mental patient, facing issues in providing medicines to them, etc. This
causes a stress factor in the carer because the person has to complete the responsibilities, even if
the patient is mis behaving or doing any abuse. Care provide play significant role in order to
provide appropriate treatment to people who are suffering from mental illness. Many time
services users react in bad manner, abuse or physically harm to services provider. In such
condition it is important for caregiver to do not react aggressively and manage the situation
effectively. Due to this all reason then suffer from emotional distress. In this circumstance
effective conversation is required so that service provider can overcome from emotional distress
issues. Caring conversation are at the heart of becoming an appreciative practitioner. There is
caring conversation framework which is developed in respect to help people who suffer from
stress or from emotional problems. The seven C's of effective communication are-
1. Completeness-
Completeness means that the message must be complete to the service giver's perception.
The message which may be provided to him must be based on complete facts and if there is
difficult message which cannot be solved, then additional information musty also be provided by
to him. This is important as if clear information or explanation will not be provided then the
stress may not be deteriorated of the service provider (7 c's of effective communication,).
2. Concreteness-
This deals with concrete and compete message which is the further expansion of
completeness communication step. The message which is to be delivered must be based on some
kind of facts and figures based on some sort of research. Nothing is based on illusion or
imagination. It is well structured as it is to be communicated to the service provider to reduce
emotional distress in the best possible way. It is based on complete facts and figures which is
necessary to provide communication in the correct manner.
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