Compliance with outpatient community mental health treatment is problematic for seriously mentally ill adults. One way to facilitate clients' compliance is through training in public bus riding and way finding skills. The authors present the history of wayfinding services, a diagram to enhance clients' learning, and suggestions for implementation.
1 Square pegs in round holes: the social context of the lives of older people -- 2 Advocacy, empowerment and carers -- 3 Assessment of an older person with mental health problems -- 4 Risk and decision making -- 5 From factory to free range: managing change in caring practice -- 6 Purposeful activity as a treatment medium -- 7 Dance movement therapy: a group therapy approach for older people with mental health problems -- 8 Group grief therapy -- 9 Sexuality and the older adult -- 10 Cultural issues in the care of mentally ill Asian elders -- 11 Flying towards Neverland -- 12 Abuse directed towards older people -- 13 Shaping the cutting edge: strategy development for nurse managers.
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Background:People with mental illness face two major problems at the same time. The first is the disease itself which they must learn to live with and to manage all its symptoms. The second, often more serious problem, is the presence of stereotypes and prejudices which are the result of insufficient knowledge about mental illnesses and their misunderstanding. The aim was to explore the current state of stigmatization by nurses towards mentally ill people. Methods: In this quantitative exploratory research we used an existing questionnaire (the Opening Minds Scale for Health Care Providers) with randomly selected nurses who treat mentally ill patients. Results:A significant difference in the degree of stigmatization with respect to the age of the nurses was not found. However,in terms of the overall assessment, specifically in the domain of attitudes, the rate of stigmatization was higher among younger respondents. Nurses with shorter professional experience proved a lower degree of stigmatization than nurses with longer professional experience. Conclusion: It is expected that the rate of mental illnesses will increase. Therefore, we recommend continuing to pay increased attention to destigmatization within the education of and developing more destigmatizing initiatives among nurses.
This article discusses historical themes that led to the civil commitment reforms of the sixties and seventies. The changes in the substantive criteria for commitment are analyzed and critiqued. The author believes that the present criteria tend to focus so specifically on various external indicia of mental illness that they render commitment difficult for many seriously ill patients. An alternative commitment scheme is discussed.
This literature review summarises the historical background of homelessness. It suggests that the current view of homeless people as chronic mentally ill is the latest phase in a series of the different ways in which society has perceived and labelled the homeless. We have argued that homelessness is a product of the lack of housing provision to the poorest section of society and that the psychiatric needs of many of the homeless might be a direct result of poverty and homelessness. This review also highlights difficulties in interpreting data produced by surveys of homeless people. These difficulties include the multiple definitions of homelessness used and also the major methodological errors which limit the usefulness of their findings. In particular sampling methods used may have overestimated the more visible part of the homeless population, overestimating the levels of psychiatric morbidity. Even if these limitations are ignored the data produced by these studies do not allow planning of effective mental health services for homeless people as their results depend mainly on diagnostic classification rather than disability or need. What is required is a study of needs where the appropriateness of particular services is defined, the sampling method is explicit and the definitions of homelessness are precise and consistent.
