week 1

In the country I was born, there are some people who are mentally ill.  Although I have no prior experience or direct relationship with them, but I can say I see them in my community.  Believes of people including me when I saw mentally ill people was that they are possess with evil spirit or supernatural power. The cure of mentally ill individuals involved ritualistic exorcism to purge out unwanted forces. These people are beating, deprived of food or separated from other people in the community. They are neglected.  Nursing school especially this course ( psychiatric nursing) have enlighten me  and now I know that mentally ill is a disease process just like any physiological illness. More so, now that I am in the nursing field, I have more empathy toward mentally ill individuals. My assumption about the mental health setting in which I am assigned was to see mentally ill individual who are not reliable, don’t know what is happening to them, acting like babies disrespecting staff members and continuous violence act. My expectation form this clinical is to have more knowledge on how to take care of the mentally ill. Be able to use therapeutic communication to relate to them. Know how to show empathy during nurse to patient interaction and be able to mention about seven side effects of each psychiatric medications. At this moment I have no concern about my clinical experience. My personal goal is to be able to restore or build hope for the mentally ill individuals. Majority of the mentally ill individual have lost hope. Their life has been a series of crushing disappointment, repetitive failure or losses stigma and discrimination. I will engage the individual in social activities that are pleasurable, helping them to develop friendship or meaningful relationship and activating spirituality or faith are some ways to help individuals restore their hope.