Mental Health Nursing Care Essay Questions

Nursing Care: Mental Health

Effective mental health nursing transcends traditional approaches, embracing the biopsychosocial model to counter reductionism and champion holistic care.

Strategies for Mental Health Nursing Care - NUR6067 Essay Guide and Assessment Information

Assessment Titles:

Title 1: What skills does a mental health nurse need in order to promote biological, psychological, and social health and why is it important that they do?

Title 2: Practical nursing strategies and skills to prevent the dangers of reductionism in providing safe and effective care within contemporary mental health services

 Critically and analytically explore and discuss the essay titles.  

Answering the above essay title and including the following elements below will allow you to demonstrate attainment of the module learning outcomes.

Things to include:

• The essay cannot be written well without a particular focus, because you cannot discuss all of nursing or all of mental health services in one essay. So, although it is not stated directly in the essay question you need to pick a focus. Our suggestion is to pick a particular focus such as 1:1 time, conducting a care planning meeting (perhaps including the work before and after it), or possibly a community nurse making a first visit.
• The first part of the essay question asks you to explore nursing strategies and skills. This means that the reader/marker will expect to see paragraphs that are obviously about nursing strategies and skills. The second part tells you that these skills are things that can be used to prevent the dangers of reductionism. That means that the reader/marker will expect that each paragraph will move on to offer reasons to think that these skills could have the effect of countering reductionism. The final part of the question suggests that the reader/marker will also learn how these issues sit in contemporary mental health services. It will not be enough to write some paragraphs about skills, some about reductionism and some about services. This is because each paragraph must develop an answer to the question, and the question needs you to link the three together. A lot of students struggle to understand this and lose a lot of marks (their work ends up “too descriptive” and “unapplied”). If you are in doubt, ask!
• In mental health services, reductionism is often biomedical, but it is not the only way that reductionism can occur: all simple and tidy approaches to mental health are contestable. When discussing reductionism ensure this is broader than just the biomedical.
• Create a conclusion that explores the answer to the essay title and demonstrates how the interface between risk, ethics, law and service-user perspectives establish how quality improvements are made in mental health care and personal practice.

 Key points to remember:

• Your essay should draw upon the recommended reading for the module (essays with reference lists with very few of the major recommended texts are less likely to be successful), and further references are likely to be required.
• Given that sociology offers us understandings of human experience that are about power, there ought to be an element of your essay that discusses ideas about injustice and what things a nurse can do about that. That will also help you to demonstrate some learning within learning outcome 4.
• In our experience, most student nurses lose a lot of marks for structure and organisation of their work. Refer to guidance on Moodle about good paragraph formation and using the technique of reverse outlining to help improve your work.

What to include in your essay:

Please see below the guidance on what you should include in your assessment:

To answer this question at level 6 it is expected that you will need to:

• Reference some key texts about biopsychosocial approaches
• Reference some key texts about approaches designed to specifically provide perspectives that include social context and mental health
• Discuss and reference relevant specific mental health nursing values and skills. Please do not forget that this essay is about nursing skills.
• Use the Equality Act 2010 and other documents to demonstrate some ethical imperatives to consider social determinants of health (so that you can include thoughts about why it is important that MHNs work in biopsychosocial ways, part of the question)
• Reflect upon the extent to which mental health services are biopsychosocial, with references.

It is also recommended that you

• Do not try to fix all of nursing or all mental health services in one essay! That will lead to an essay that goes from topic to topic without a unifying theme. Use a specific focus to help you get into a good level of depth. This could be a particular intervention, such as a care-planning meeting, or focus on the work of a particular team or clinical area.
• Use this focus to make all the issues relevant in your essay rather than discussing all the issues and then only briefly mentioning the relevance to nursing.

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 Essay Sample

 

Assessment Title:

What skills does a mental health nurse need in order to promote biological, psychological and social health and why is it important that they do?

 

 

Introduction

Mental health nursing is a complex and dynamic field that requires a comprehensive understanding of the diverse factors that influence mental health and well-being. The biopsychosocial model, which encompasses biological, psychological, and social factors, provides a valuable framework for understanding and addressing the multifaceted nature of mental health care (Engel, 1977). In this essay, we will critically examine the biopsychosocial approach to mental health care, with a focus on the essential skills required by mental health nurses to promote biological, psychological, and social health. The discussion will be structured around the following key areas: biopsychosocial approaches, the role of mental health nurses in holistic assessment, planning and implementation, evidence-based communication strategies, and the interface between risk, ethics, law, and service-user perspectives in mental health care. Through a thorough exploration of these topics, we will establish the importance of mental health nursing skills in promoting comprehensive and effective care across a variety of settings.

Biopsychosocial Approaches: Critically Examining Mental Health Care

The biopsychosocial model, initially proposed by Engel (1977), provides a comprehensive framework for understanding mental health care by considering the interplay between biological, psychological, and social factors. This model challenges the traditional biomedical paradigm, which primarily focuses on physiological processes and tends to overlook the complexities of human experience (Ghaemi, 2009). The biopsychosocial approach acknowledges that mental health is influenced by multiple determinants, including genetic predispositions, individual experiences, and social context (Engel, 1977; White, 2005). This perspective facilitates a more nuanced understanding of mental health, recognizing that mental illness is a contested notion, influenced by various cultural, historical, and societal factors (Pilgrim & Rogers, 2005).

In recent years, the biopsychosocial model has been increasingly adopted in mental health care, as it accounts for the complex interplay of factors contributing to mental health and illness (Borrell-Carrió, Suchman, & Epstein, 2004). Epidemiological research demonstrates that mental health disorders are influenced by a multitude of determinants, including genetic predispositions, individual experiences, and social context (Kessler et al., 2005). Demographic factors, such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status, also play a significant role in shaping mental health outcomes (World Health Organization, 2001)...Read More

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