Psychological Approaches in Psychiatric Nursing

There has been much discussion recently about the therapeutic role of the psychiatric nurse and in particular about the therapeutic potential of the nurse-patient relationship. A small number of psychiatric nurses are now also receiving additional training as "nurse therapists", and yet this role is one implicit to all psychiatric nursing. In developing therapeutic nurse-patient relationships, a framework other than the medico-custodial one is needed. In this book, alternative frameworks in the form of psychological approaches are presented. The approaches described are: behavioural, psychodynamic and psychosocial including crisis intervention, group therapy and therapeutic communities. There is one chapter on relationship-making skills and one on psychological approaches with the elderly such as reality orientation. This book provides an introductory overview of different approaches and in the final chapter some of the issues on evaluating different approaches are discussed.