Issues in mental health nursing
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Oct 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialCompassion fatigue in adult daughter caregivers of a parent with dementia.
Adult daughters face distinct challenges caring for parents with dementia and may experience compassion fatigue: the combination of helplessness, hopelessness, an inability to be empathic, and a sense of isolation resulting from prolonged exposure to perceived suffering. Prior research on compassion fatigue has focused on professional healthcare providers and has overlooked filial caregivers. ⋯ Four themes were identified in adult daughter caregiver interviews: (a) uncertainty; (b) doubt; (c) attachment; and (d) strain. Findings indicated adult daughter caregivers are at risk for compassion fatigue, supporting the need for a larger study exploring compassion fatigue in this population.
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Sep 2014
Review'Violence is not part of our job': a thematic analysis of psychiatric mental health nurses' experiences of patient assaults from a New Zealand perspective.
This paper describes psychiatric mental health nurses' (PMHN) experiences of patient assaults within mental healthcare settings using a thematic analytical approach. The aim of the study was to explore and describe psychiatric mental health nurses' experiences of patient assaults. The major findings of the study related to the nature and impact of assaults and supportive strategies associated with violence perpetrated by patients against psychiatric mental health nurses. ⋯ Psychological harm has also occurred, including quite severe mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Protective strategies for combating negative consequences of workplace violence include practice of self-defence, social support and a supportive and consultative workplace culture with access to counselling services and assistance in all aspects, including finances. The paper concludes that while healthcare employers need to provide better support services to the healthcare professionals who are assaulted, the legal system also needs to acknowledge that assaults against nurses are a violation of human rights and violence should not to be tolerated as part of working in mental healthcare settings.
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · Apr 2014
Freud, psychoanalysis, and the therapeutic effect of agapic love.
Last year, when reading Freud's letters to Jung, I came across a most interesting passage in which Freud claimed that the "talking cure" (i.e., psychoanalysis) was the result of love--not transference, counter-transference, or another neologism of psychiatry. That is, Freud said to Jung, the cure in psychoanalysis is affected by love (McGuire, 1974 ). I meditated on this for a long while: It is interesting that Freud--whose wife was a bat kohen, daughter of a priest/rabbi--and Jung, the son and grandson of Protestant Christian ministers, would have such a soteriological dialog at the beginning of the psychoanalytic era. ⋯ There is much written in contemporary psychiatric literature about fears of boundary crossing in mental health (Gabbard, 1995 ); Jung's documented erotic relationship with medical student and patient, Sabina Spielrein, may be the causa causans of this concern. But, these fears--correct concerns about untoward involvement in sexual relationships with patients--have obscured the real importance of what Freud and Jung were talking about back in the beginning of their movement. More than 100 years later, it may well be time to revisit the early dialogue of the founders of psychoanalysis and hear them in their own words once again.