Mental disorder Archives - Off the Charts

Fear of Violence: A Poor Rationale for Better Mental Health Care

Insulin shock therapy is given in Lapinlahti Hospital, Helsinki in 1950s (Wikimedia)

By Doug Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, Michigan State University College of Nursing, and AJN contributing editor. Olsen regularly addresses topics related to nursing ethics.

There are many good reasons to provide better mental health care in the United States; however, the prevention of mass murder is not one of them.

Mental disorders involve great suffering, and many people who could find some relief through treatment either don’t receive it in a timely fashion or never receive it at all. After the large psychiatric hospitals of the mid-20th century discharged their patients in waves of deinstitutionalization starting in the 1970s, many of the resources that were promised to support these people in the community never materialized. In recent decades, many persons with mental disorder have ended up in the prison system, often for minor offenses, where treatment, if received at all, can be harsh and inadequate. (See: Early, P. (2006). Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness). A

Adequate resources to support all persons with serious and persistent mental illness in the community would prevent and alleviate a […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:08:34-05:00January 11th, 2013|Ethics, Nursing, Patients, safe staffing|1 Comment

Grief: The Proposed DSM-5 Gets It Wrong

By Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

Today is my son’s birthday. I remember so clearly the day of his birth, the overwhelming sense of recognition the first time I saw him, as if I had known him forever.

April 16^th is the anniversary of his death. When a birth is so closely followed by a death, they are forever intertwined. I remember watching him sleep, how he turned to the music when I turned the key of his music box and “It’s a Small World” unwound its notes against the side of his warming bed. I remember his three-year-old brother holding him, sitting in the rocking chair in their father’s lap. I remember rocking in that chair three weeks later, holding him against my chest as his few last breaths faded. I remember the long walk back down the hall, the drive home, the blur of a funeral. And then the first long cold winter, visiting his grave day after day, distraught that my baby lay in frozen earth, unprotected from the cold. And the months that stretched on into a future I sometimes couldn’t bear to think about, because I couldn’t imagine my way out of the pain of grief into a day when I would feel joy again.

I was grieving. I listened for the phone, certain the hospital would call any minute to tell me it was all a […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:10:26-05:00March 28th, 2012|Nursing|11 Comments

Examining Our Biases About Mental Illness

“There’s nothing really wrong with him, it’s just anxiety.” How many times have you heard someone say this—or said it yourself? Mental health problems are among the most marginalized health conditions in the United States. They’re viewed as less “real” than physical illnesses; there’s no tumor to be palpated, no abnormality to be spotted on an X-ray. Emotional and psychological problems are often thought to be under a person’s control in a way that, say, multiple sclerosis or cancer is not. And because mental health problems can be construed as signs of weakness, sufferers may hide their symptoms. People who suffer from a mental illness need to feel comfortable seeking care and to trust that they’ll be treated with skill, compassion, and respect. This is vital: studies consistently find that mental illnesses, particularly depression, take a terrible toll on health. Such illnesses have been associated with an increased risk of stroke, coronary artery disease, and dementia, as well as increased mortality in people with cancer, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease and following a myocardial infarction or coronary artery bypass surgery.

That’s from “Examining our Biases About Mental Illness,” the Editorial in the February issue of AJN by clinical managing editor Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C. What biases and assumptions about the mentally ill, the depressed, the anxious have you seen in your practice? Do you ever find yourself slipping into such biases yourself as a kind of default setting?

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:10:37-05:00February 24th, 2012|nursing perspective|4 Comments