Issues in mental health nursing
-
This study explored the meaning of hope, the influence of specific background characteristics on hope, and identified strategies that are used to foster hope in a convenience sample of 60 older adults using the technique of methodological triangulation (interview, Hope Index, and Background Data Form). Hope was described as an expectation of a brighter tomorrow for self and/or others. ⋯ Eight hope-fostering categories and four hope-hindering categories were identified based on the interview responses. Implications for practice and research are presented.
-
Issues Ment Health Nurs · Jan 1993
Promoting nursing students' positive attitudes toward providing care for suicidal patients.
Nurses may encounter patients who are suicidal in most clinical settings, yet many nurses report a negative attitude toward providing care for these patients. Nursing programs, in which students learn about suicide and develop skills in assessing and intervening with patients who are suicidal, are opportune settings for promoting a positive attitude toward providing care for suicide attempters. An experimental study compared the effectiveness of an interactive teaching strategy known as "structured controversy" with a lecture on promoting a positive attitude. ⋯ Students who had participated in structured controversy on suicide were significantly more positive on the stress/frustration factor extracted from a scale of attitude items. Students who had listened to the suicide lecture held significantly more positive beliefs about providing care for suicidal patients. Implications for education and practice are discussed.
-
The purpose of this study was to compare the marital and family adjustment of headache patients and their spouses, before pain control treatment, to couples without chronic pain. Minuchin's (1978) family systems theory of psychosomatic illness was tested, using an adult sample. This sample consisted of 117 headache-patient-and-spouse couples and a control group of 108 married couples without chronic pain. ⋯ Headache patients' pain per day correlated positively with greater family cohesion and adaptability. Headache patients' severity of pain correlated positively with greater marital affection. The spouses' marital cohesion, affection, and family cohesion and adaptability correlated positively with increased severity of patients' pain.