Introduction
The focus of Healthy People 2030 is on the prevention, screening, evaluation, and treatment of behavioral and mental health issues. The goals for mental health problems and mental disorders also include improving the health and standard of living for those who suffer from these problems. Mental diseases impact all ages and racial groups. However, certain groups are disproportionately afflicted. Statistics indicate that only 50% of individuals with mental problems receive the necessary care (Healthy People 2030, n.d.).
Additionally, there are connections between physical and mental wellness. Mental illnesses like sadness and anxiety can make it difficult for people to engage in healthy practices. Physical health issues may also hamper the ability to receive therapy for mental illnesses. Increased mental illness screening can aid in patients receiving the care they require.
Mental Health Issue
The absence of mental diseases is only one aspect of mental wellness. It has variable degrees of difficulty and suffering, is perceived differently by everyone, and may have diverse social and therapeutic implications. It occurs on a complicated continuum. Mental health issues include psychosocial impairments, mental illnesses, and other mental states linked to high levels of suffering, functional limitations, or risk of self-harm (Jones et al., 2022). Although this is not always the case, people with mental health conditions are more likely to report lower psychological well-being. It is a crucial element of health and well-being that supports our individual and group capacity to decide, form connections, and influence the world people live in. A vital human right, interpersonal skills are essential to macroeconomic, communal, and personal growth.
Throughout human lives, various people, social and structural factors, and others may interact to support or damage overall psychological health and cause us to move along the psychological health continuum. People may be more susceptible to mental health issues due to personal psychological and biological characteristics, including emotional intelligence, substance use, and heredity. People are more likely to develop mental health problems when they are exposed to adverse social, financial, geopolitical, and environmental factors, such as poverty, violence, injustice, and environmental destruction.
Risks can appear at any stage of life, but those during developmentally vulnerable times, particularly in early infancy, are harmful. For instance, physical punishment and strict parenting are known to harm children’s health, and bullying is a significant risk factor for mental health issues. Similar prevention efforts persist throughout human lives and help us be more resilient (Jones et al., 2022). They comprise, among other things, our unique social and emotional abilities and traits, good relationships with others, a good education, respectable employment, secure surroundings, and a sense of community.
At various scales, society contains both threats and safeguards for mental health. The danger to people, families, and communities is increased by local threats. Global hazards, such as times of recession, infectious diseases, humanitarian crises, forced relocation, and the escalating climate issue, raise the risk for whole populations. Each risk and protective factor only has a modest ability to forecast the future. The majority of persons who are subjected to a risk factor do not go on to develop a mental health disease, in contrast to the many individuals who have no exposure to risk factors (Jones et al., 2022). However, the interrelated factors that affect mental health care can either improve or worsen mental health.
Mental Health Nursing Approach
Health Care Promotion
To lower risks, foster resilience, and create settings that are conducive to mental health, promotion, and preventive interventions, first analyze and identify societal and institutional determinants of mental health. Interventions may be created for single people, specific groups, or whole communities. Promotion and preventive initiatives should encompass the education, labor, justice, transportation, environmental, housing, and welfare sectors, as changing the variables of mental health frequently involve action beyond the health sector. By integrating promotion and preventive initiatives into health services, as well as by advocating, starting, and, where necessary, supporting multisectoral cooperation and coordination, the health sector may make a substantial contribution.
Limiting access to resources, responsible media coverage, social and emotional education for teenagers, and early detection can all result in significant progress. A very cheap and cost-effective technique for lowering suicide rates is banning highly toxic chemicals. Another top objective is advancing children’s and adolescents’ mental health. It may be accomplished through enacting laws and regulations that support and safeguard mental health, assisting caregivers in providing nurturing care, putting in place school-based initiatives, and enhancing community and online settings. Programs for social and emotional development in schools are among the best marketing approaches for nations of all income levels. Government legislation, organizational initiatives, management training, and worker interventions may all help the burgeoning field of interest in promoting and safeguarding mental health at work.
King’s Goal Attainment
Many people choose to become nurses because they wish to play a significant role in helping patients achieve health. Setting health objectives with the patient and implementing strategies to reach those goals are required to do that. This process is emphasized in Imogene King’s Theory of Goal Attainment, which aims to support nurses in their work with patients by assisting them in reaching the health-related objectives they have set for themselves (Fronczek & Messmer, 2021). King’s thesis sheds light on how nurses engage with people and groups in their surroundings. It emphasizes the significance of the client’s involvement in a choice that affects care and places equal emphasis on the process of nurse-client contact and the results of treatment. It focuses on a procedure to assist nurses in the nurse-patient interaction and assist patients in achieving the health goals they have established.
Henderson’s Nursing Need Theory
Virginia Henderson created the nursing need theory based on her experience and training. Henderson’s objective was to establish a distinct emphasis on nursing practice, not to construct a nursing philosophy. The notion places a strong emphasis on boosting patient independence to ensure that recovery from hospitalization does not take longer than necessary (Alligood, 2017). Her emphasis on fundamental human needs as the center of nursing practice has sparked more theoretical growth on patient needs and how nursing might help to address those needs.
Patients could need help being well and independent or getting help dying peacefully. The person takes into account the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects and believes that the mind and body are interdependent and interdependent. Instead of viewing the patient as a specific customer or consumer, this idea sees them as a composite with physiological requirements. The environment consists of the circumstances under which a person learns their particular ways of living (Foster et al., 2019). All environmental factors and influences have an impact on growth and life. In addition to families, people are also a part of the environment. The notion briefly touches on how the community affects the individual and family. To provide the patient with primary nursing care, the fourteen tasks listed in the model can be performed independently.
Mental Health Nurses
The profession of mental health nursing, commonly referred to as clinical psychology, is a specialist area of nursing that deals with providing care to people who have mental health illnesses to aid in their recovery and improve their quality of life. Mental health nurses can offer specialized care because of their superior understanding of the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of mental diseases. A medical team often collaborates with other healthcare providers to provide the patient with the best possible clinical results. People of any age, racial or cultural background, or financial condition can develop the mental disease. Because of this, a mental health nurse may encounter a wide range of people from varied social and economic backgrounds.
Care for individuals with psychiatric illnesses, mental health conditions, or behavioral difficulties is the primary responsibility of a mental health worker. Diagnosis, counseling, and pharmaceutical prescription are just a few of the activities that a mental health nurse does, many of which are identical to those of a psychiatrist. Other areas of focus for mental health nurses include the care of patients with psychiatric disorders associated with a particular age or group, for example. These could include children’s health, adolescence, geriatrics, drug misuse, and eating disorders.
No matter their area of expertise, nurses may interact with patients who are exhibiting symptoms of or are at risk for developing mental illness. Despondency, anger, or violent behavior are just a few of the signs that patients with mental illness may exhibit. Nurses need to be aware that a socially awkward, gruff, or difficult patient may display symptoms of a mental disorder. Mentally ill patients are frequently viewed as troublesome. Nurses must treat patients respectfully rather than passing judgment on them based solely on their behavior.
Trauma and long-term medical issues can occasionally cause sadness or anxiety. The onset of mental anguish can occasionally be caused by conditions or drugs. Patients with Parkinson’s disease, thyroid conditions, or adverse effects from beta blockers, for instance, may experience symptoms that resemble sadness. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which governs mood and emotions as well as physical processes, including digestion, the immune system, and energy consumption, may be activated by stress.
The adequate information for developing a system to care for the physically and psychologically sick comes from nurses since they interact with patients daily. To ensure that care is available to affordable, continuous treatment that gives them the psychotherapy and drugs they need to manage and live with mental illness, they may lobby for and have a say in establishing new financing policies. Nurses significantly influence patients’ attitudes; they can increase the likelihood that patients will have a positive result if they are compassionate while providing high-quality treatment. The primary goal of nursing care is to promote patients’ total health, which also includes their emotional well-being (Foster et al., 2019). Nurses should complete their education to get more excellent knowledge about diagnosing patients with mental illness and how to assist them in receiving the psychiatric treatment they require. Patients can transcend the stigma of mental illness with the help and compassion of nurses.
Mental Health Treatment in Nursing
By improving the quality of well-being, competence, and tolerance and fostering supportive surroundings and living situations, mental health promotion strives to promote positive mental health. The objective of mental disease prevention is to lessen symptoms and, eventually, mental illnesses. One method it employs to accomplish these goals is mental health development. When aimed at improving community mental well-being, mental health promotion may also have the secondary effect of reducing the prevalence of mental illnesses. As a result, preventative and promotion measures frequently include identical tasks and result in disparate but related results.
The provision of complete and holistic mental health care to people who have mental illness involves knowledge and competence in the field of mental health nursing, which is crucial in the delivery of healthcare services. The profession of mental health nursing may involve treating patients who have co-morbid conditions (Foster et al., 2019). Individuals with co-morbidities must always have access to adequate mental health care in addition to evaluation and diagnosis of other disorders, regardless of the environment, where the primary care requirement is for mental illness or a mental health condition.
By respecting the rights of those who need care, mental health nursing services are offered in the least restrictive manner possible. Care provision must promote human freedom and rights while upholding the nurses’ duty of care to prevent endangering the patient’s and others’ safety (Foster et al., 2019). To provide person-centered care and foster relationships, mental health nursing practices abide by the concepts of trauma-informed and rehabilitation practice. The worldview and philosophies of rehabilitation and deinstitutionalization are the cornerstones of the care given to those suffering from mental illness or matters about it. They guide the provision of adequate and appropriate congregation mental health treatment endorsed by in-patient specialized mental health services.
Financial support for specialized mental health treatment must be sufficient and in line with the needs of people, groups, and regions. Planning for services at the municipal, territorial, and federal levels must support the financing. At all levels of government, mental health nurses must be included in service planning. Specific mental health nursing courses with both research and practical elements must continue to be given at the postgraduate level to guarantee a healthy present and future population of mental health nurses. Core topics that matter in mental health must be included in nursing program courses as well.
Conclusion
Clinical, administrative, managerial, educational, and research career pathways must be available to mental health nurses. They must also be able to pursue postgraduate degrees that lead to nursing professional certification and positions in both the government and business. Researchers vehemently reject the hiring of other staff categories, regardless of their titles, to the detriment of mental health nurse roles and services in any context. To deliver mental health nursing services, mental health nurses have the right to formal, compensated clinical governance.
In the context in which they work, mental health nurses must constantly maintain strong lines of responsibility for nursing. This does not exclude functional reporting in management systems outside of the nursing field. Nursing awards and registered agreements should include mental health nurses, irrespective of the environment in which they work, and they should have access to participation in specialty nursing and industry groups. The applicable work health and safety regulations give psychological health nurses the freedom to practice.
References
Alligood, M. R. (2017). Introduction to nursing theory: Its history and significance. Nursing Theorists and Their Work-E-Book, 1. Web.
Fronczek, A. E., & Messmer, P. R. (2021). Imogene M. King: Conceptual system and theory of goal attainment. Nursing Theorists and Their Work E-Book, 213. Web.
Foster, K., Roche, M., Delgado, C., Cuzzillo, C., Giandinoto, J. A., & Furness, T. (2019). Resilience and mental health nursing: An integrative review of international literature. International journal of mental health nursing, 28(1), 71-85. Web.
Jones, J. S., Jones, J. S., & Beauvais, A. M. (2022). Psychiatric mental health nursing: An interpersonal approach. Jones & Bartlett Learning. Web.
Healthy People 2030. (n.d.). Mental health and mental disorders. U.S. Department Of Health and Human Services. Web.
