One of the biggest issues for nurses who are focusing on mental healthcare is the pressure to place their patients into a little box that matches their symptoms. Someone might come into the doctor’s office seeking medical attention, and if they match the symptoms of depression, anxiety or some other health problem, they are given the standard medication and treatment plan for that mental illness. If it doesn’t work, they are often shuffled to another doctor so the same thing can happen again.
For the nurses on the front lines, it can be very hard to shake this culture of simply treating the symptoms and not the cause. However, if nurses who are involved in the treatment of mental health really want to help, they need to focus on providing specialized care to the patients who come into their offices for treatment.
There are many benefits to providing specialized care for the people who need it, and specialized care is all about meeting the person as an individual. Medical professionals must try to treat a person with a mental health issue rather than the mental health issue itself. It can be a paradigm shift for a lot of nurses, but those who know how to provide specialized care can really benefit their patients.
Why is specialized care so important for mental health?
We don’t know the precise reasons that many mental health symptoms develop in individuals. Some people might develop mental health issues after trauma, from their environment, because of how they were raised, or from thousands of other circumstances ranging from their lifestyle to their friend groups and how much water they drink. With so many factors causing mental health issues and making them worse for so many patients, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all cure for mental health problems.
Additionally, what works well for one person who is suffering from a mental health condition might not be as effective for someone else. One person might benefit from having medication and therapy, while someone else might benefit from regular time outdoors and getting a dog to help them feel less alone. As much as the world might want to put people in boxes and treat cures like a one-size-fits-all solution, that just isn’t how it works.
Specialized care that is more holistic in nature and focuses on the big picture doesn’t just treat symptoms. Instead, it treats the entire lifestyle of the patient, focusing on what they are doing that might be causing and contributing to their mental health issues. Additionally, specialized care can focus on various ways to treat mental health issues.
If a patient is taking medication and hasn’t seen a noticeable shift in how they feel, they might try therapy, behavior modification or some other technique to see how it works. Eventually, the patient is going to find habits that make them feel better. However, it might take some time and a willingness to try new things, and this is a process that specialized care can help guide them through.
How specialized care can help different communities
Specialized care isn’t just provided on a patient-by-patient basis; it can also be offered to different communities. For example, if a community of people who have never had access to mental health services starts to be serviced by a nurse, the nurse will need to incorporate more education into their care and make sure that the community knows why these tactics for dealing with mental health are effective rather than simply being told that they need to use them.
Different communities are not only going to have different mental health challenges but also different ways of looking at those challenges and healthcare in general.
How specialized care can help patients of different socio-economic classes
Specialized care can also be helpful for patients of different socio-economic classes, especially people who have a hard time getting medical-based treatment for their mental health. With specialized care from understanding nurses, people can find various ways to treat their mental health without dipping into their savings to pay for expensive medication. Instead, they can make lifestyle changes that not only are easy to make but can also serve as natural remedies and relief for mental health issues.
How do you learn to provide specialized care?
To provide specialized care as a nurse, you need to know a lot about mental health. Additionally, you must be able to listen to your patients and guide them through various forms of treatment. This requires a range of skills, and you need to make sure you are prepared to handle the wide variety of situations you may encounter.
Students who want to focus on the process to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner professionals and support the mental health of their clients need a proper education. An effective approach is to enroll in the program offered by Rockhurst University, which recognizes the large number of people suffering from mental health issues in our world and seeks to train people to provide help. The course teaches you everything you need to know about treating mental health as part of a healthcare team, and they also allow you to learn everything you need to know online so you can absorb the information on a schedule that suits your other responsibilities.
Once you learn how to provide specialized care, you can start treating patients and helping people who are suffering from mental illness navigate the path to wellness.
