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CLINICAL REFLECTION
Clinical Reflection
Introduction
Mental health is a person’s well-being in which the individual knows their ability or capacity and can contribute meaningfully to discussions as well as their community. While mental illness is when an individual is not stable in reasoning, misbehaves or aggressive, would have to be on some psychiatric medication to function properly (Morgan & Townsend, 2018). As a student I had a lot of questions about this class going through my mind: “what will the experience be?” “Will I be able to cope?” “How will I be able to survive any violent reactions from any client without violating their rights?”. I cannot stand an aggressive person not to talk of taking care of them. I have always believed mental health/illness is very complex to understand.
Background
On the 11th of July, 2022 my preceptor had 3 patients which obviously had different diagnosis and intervention. Yes, at this stage of learning I should be more comfortable with caring for different patients with moderate help but coming across a mentally ill patient that is suffering from brain cancer challenged me the most. Providing care for this patient was harder because my personal safety was at stake as well, his mental illness was as result of medication misuse and other underlying condition, plans were made to have the patient transferred to a psychiatric facility. I was able to understand the definition of mental health, mental illness; Mental health is the ability to maintain homeostasis, control thoughts, environment and complete task as defined by the society/culture. While mental illness is the maladaptive responses to stressors from the internal or external environment, evidenced by thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are incongruent with the local and cultural norms and that interfere with the individual’s social, occupational, and/ or physical functioning.
Human being can attain the state of mental wellbeing using Maslow hierarchy of needs which can occur as at any point in life without orders. There are six indicators that reflects mental health, which are positive attitude, growth and development, integration, autonomy, perception, environment, perception of reality, and environmental mastery. There is going to be a way to adapt the stress that leads to mental illness, these psychological adaptation to stress is determined by the degree to which the thoughts, feelings, behaviors interfere with an individual’s functioning. The two major primary psychological response patterns to stress are Anxiety and Grief (Morgan & Townsend, 2018).
Conclusion
At the end of the stimulation and debrief, I was able to understand properly that therapeutic communication is one major healing tool a nurse must not let go of. Also, proper use of nursing process is important in caring for patient in all situations.
Reference
Morgan, K. I., & Townsend, M. C. (2018). Davis advantage psychiatric mental health nursing. Pennsylvania: F.A. Davis Company.
