Admission and Unit Information - Graduate Diploma in Nursing Mental Health

Assessment is an essential component of the nurse/client interaction in mental health/psychiatric nursing. Effective nursing depends on comprehensive, accurate, systematic and continuous data collection. This assists the nurse and client to accurately identify and document critical client issues and formulate management strategies. This unit prepares the student in the area of mental health assessment, in identifying the factors that affect individual/family mental health and applying this knowledge to decisions about appropriate interventions.

This unit will assist the student to develop a comprehensive understanding of the nurse-client relationship in mental health nursing, presenting this relationship in its multiple contexts, (e.g., the interpersonal, cultural and socio-political), in order to appreciate factors influencing this relationship and the way it might be 'lived out' in practice. The unit assists students to understand: (1) the nurse-client relationship and its development; (2) the nature of the relationship between the client and nurse; (3) how skilled nurses use this relationship to assist their clients; and (4) how the type of relationship the nurse develops with the client frequently determines the quality of work they do together.

This unit is designed to challenge the student to consider evidence-based practice in mental health nursing. Nurses are required to be accountable for their clinical practice and to be able to argue the evidence for specific nursing interventions. Students undertake critical analysis of evidence-based practice in mental health nursing as a concept, a means of accountability, as a means of defining nursing knowledge. Students will apply evidence-based practice concepts to specific psychiatric disorders and problems.

Professional practice in Mental Health Nursing is continually evolving to meet changing social, political and legal requirements related to mental health issues. These requirements include changes in social and political understandings of mental illness and the rights and responsibilities of consumers, carers and providers. There has also been increased emphasis on health promotion, prevention and education in population specific contexts (eg, aged care, child and family, adolescent mental health, alcohol and other drugs services). Mental Health Nurses thus face challenges to develop practice that is congruent with the context of these changing requirements. This unit aims to provide a basis of inquiry into contemporary practice(s) from which the nurse can build an ongoing understanding and appreciation of changing influences.

This unit examines neuroanatomy and neurophysiology as they apply to altered thought, mood, perception and behaviour associated with mental illness; biological contributors to mental illness including hormones, genes, immune mechanisms, nutrition, and sleep disturbance; and the application of an understanding of biological contributors to advanced mental health practice.