Illness/Mental Health
- Mental illness includes disorders that affect mood, behavior, and thinking
- Often cause significant stress and impaired
... [Show More] functioning Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Health (DSM-5) → 3 purposes
- Provide standardized nomenclature and language for all mental health professionals
- To present defining characteristics or symptoms that differentiate specific diagnoses
- To assist in identifying the underlying causes of disorders
Healthy People 2020 Objective for MH
- Increase number of people identified, diagnoses, treated, helped to live healthier lives
- Decrease rates of suicide, homelessness
- Increase employment for those with serious mental illness
- Provide more services for incarcerated persons with mental health problems
Therapeutic Communication-therapeutic responses, concrete and abstract messages
- Empathetic
- Supportive (NOT giving advice)
- Build trust
- Recognize their emotions
- “I’m sorry you feel that way”
- “I’m sorry this is happening to you”
- “I know/understand this is difficult” See page 99 table 6.1 for further information
Defense mechanisms
- Compensation → overachieving in one area to compensate for failures in another
- Denial → unable to face reality; refusal to admit the truth/admit there is a problem
- Displacement→ taking out frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects
- Intellectualization → avoid thinking about the stressful, emotional aspect of the situation and instead focus only on the intellectual component
- Projection → taking own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people
- EX: if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead believe that he or she doesn’t like you
- Undoing → trying to make up for what one feels are inappropriate thoughts,
feelings, behaviors
- EX: if you hurt someone's feelings you might offer to do something nice or them in order to assuage your anxiety or guilt
- Rationalization → avoiding true reason for behavior, making an excuse
- EX: a person who is turned down might rationalize the situation by saying they weren’t attracted to each other
- Reaction formation→ EX: treating someone who strongly dislike in an
excessively friendly manner in order to hide true feelings
- Regression→ backtracking; abandoning coping strategies and revert back to old patterns
- Suppression→ keep information out of conscious awareness; however memories don't disappear and continue to influence our behaviors.
- EX - person who repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child may have difficulty forming relationships in life
Proxemics and Privacy a Distance of zones between people during communication
- Nurse/client should be 3-6 feet apart
Verbal Communication Skills [Show Less]