Mental Health from Nursing

Nursing is a profession that has care and science as angular stones on which the rest of our functions are supported: education for health, self-care, management, prevention, research, health care ... is by This that we are present in virtually all areas of life, and since it could not be less, there are also nurses in mental health units. Specifically, specialist nurses.

And is that in 1932 the Senior Psychiatric Council, chaired by Dr Lafora, established the creation of the specialty of psychiatry for Spanish nurses. He was born so what was then called "psychiatric nurse's aptitude certificate" and today is known as "specialty in mental health".

The acute units of general hospitals, or even the psychiatric hospitals themselves, are far from what part of the population still imagines when he hears talking about them. They have nothing to do with the image that fantastic cinema or literature has projected in our thinking. And when you put one foot within one of these units, at the moment you realize that you will not feel like you clarice through the stone corridor until the last cell to meet Hannibal Lecter.

That kind of centers, where patients did not receive any type of treatment and their sole purpose was to separate them from the rest of society, fortunately they are some centuries ago and whose existence embodied artists like Francisco de Goya.

The people who attended the sick ones were more based on the religious faith than in scientific understanding, being centers based on charity and for more restrictive purposes than therapeutic.

At present, the presence of the Specialist Nurses is constant in the mental health units. Both in the centers known and "day hospitals" and in the hospitalization zones or in the follow-up consultations, they become the reference person for these patients since a close relationship between them is established.

The purpose of these units is, above all, therapeutic and insertion in society, accompanying and taking care of patients according to their needs and throughout the process of their illness. Looking for good adherence to treatments, something that is sometimes complicated by the absence of disease consciousness, side effects of treatment itself or lack of support in their family environment.

Nurses thus become the closest elements to the patient, being able to detect any change in it or their environment and having the tools to measure the impact that these changes can have in the evolution of their illness.

In monitoring consultations, the work of nurses and nurses is based on four pillars: provide information on the treatment that should be followed, solve doubts to the patient and his family, detect changes in his behavior and possible side effects of medication and reinforce the Achievements of the patient.

One of the innovations in mental health care goes through a new therapeutic tool known as sensory comfort rooms. At this time, it is successfully implemented in several mental health units along the Spanish geography. They consist of a room decorated with warm vinyl and lights, and equipped with sofas, weight blankets that help relax, anti-stress balloons ... The purpose of these rooms is that they are used by the patient during a crisis, when he is agitated or anguished , but it is important that you are previously known at a time of tranquility to learn how to use it and discover the resources you offer. They create an environment that favors therapeutic relaxation and where it can implement strategies with which to face stress, leaving back the measures of containment.

Unfortunately if something has been present both in the past and in the present, it is the social stigma that surrounds mental illness. Seeing the sick as a threat, discriminating them and rejecting them for the prejudices that still have a part of society causes that, in many cases, whoever suffers or believes that a mental illness may not dare to verbalize it.

At work or in the street nobody escapes from you because you have diabetes or heart failure, but with a mental pathology the thing changes. Some friends think twice before calling you, in that job interview the options that they hire you will be less and that cousin with which you used to stay to do sport are just called you. I hope and I want to celebrate days as today, World Mental Health Day, serve that in the future these prejudices disappear. But for that there is a lot of work to do.