A new dimension for psychological intervention

21 May 2012

Mental Health team launch ground breaking book for mental health nurse students and professionals.

With psychological interventions increasingly used in mental health nursing and the importance to patient treatment recognised by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the book is expected to prove a valuable and important tool for many mental health nursing students and professionals.

Mental health problems are common, with one in four people thought to suffer some form of mental health illness in their lifetime. Conditions can be long lasting and can have a serious impact on quality of life for individuals and their families and carers. Outcomes have been shown to improve by good practice-based interventions, including psychological therapies, highlighting the need for such a book.

This ground-breaking book, Psychological Interventions in Mental Health Nursing, is the ideal resource for trainee and qualified mental health nurses or healthcare professionals looking for a guide to the main psychological therapies and interventions available in practice.

"We're really excited about the book as there are currently no other books like it in the nursing arena," says Author, Grahame Smith, Principal Lecturer and Head of the Mental Health, Social Work and Counselling Department. "Books that are currently available tend to focus on interventions at a broad level or focus on one specific intervention so we’re delighted to bring this new resource to the field."

The book was launched at the Energise for Excellence in Mental Health & Learning Disability Nursing Conference.

Grahame added:

"The book and the conference encapsulates the effective working relationship that the mental health team at LJMU has with its practice partners."

Built around the Nursing and Midwifery Council's (2010) standards for pre-registration nursing education and written by experts in the field, the book explains which interventions are most effective for each of the more common mental health disorders. It also shows you how these interventions work in practice and illustrates the skills required to use them in practice, using examples from real practioners' experiences. Particular attention is paid to the ethical context of psychological interventions and challenges readers to question their underlying beliefs, values and assumptions.

Psychological interventions within mental health nursing practice have always been a high priority, as reflected in the Department of Health's (2006) guidance for pre-registration mental health nursing programmes and the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (2010) standards for pre-registration nursing. These documents emphasize the need for contemporary mental health nursing students to develop skills and knowledge that improve care outcomes for mental health service users both at a broad level such as communication skills, and at a specific level such as psychosocial interventions.

"The mental health nursing lecturers within the Faculty have long recognised that delivering effective psychological interventions is a crucial part of the contemporary mental health nurse's practice and certainly over the last few years this is something that has also been reflected in pre-registration mental health nurse training programmes" explains Grahame.

The book has been a real team effort and is testament to the dedicated Mental Health Nursing Team who began writing the book in August 2010. Each member of the team produced a chapter either on their own or with a full-time practitioner, with Grahame taking on the role of editor/author.

The book can now be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk

"This book provides excellent foundations in common psychological interventions that are used in mental health and other fields of nursing. Each chapter uses a scenario, which helps to apply the concepts to the real world of providing healthcare. This is reinforced by the robust manner in which the text signposts readers to examples which they may use or test out in their day to day practice of mental health nursing."
Paul Barber, Senior Lecturer, University of Chester, UK

"This accessible scenario based text gets to the heart of how to effectively integrate psychological values and emotional intelligence with professional, ethical and cognitive skills to develop a meaningful collaborative therapeutic relationship with mental health service users and their families. The language, style, and format is engaging and linked to mental health field-specific competencies which all pre-registration mental health nurses must now achieve to graduate and register with the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC 2010)."
Linda Cooper, Professional Head Mental Health Nursing, Learning Disability and Psychosocial Care, Cardiff University, UK (former Chair Mental Health Nurse Academics UK)
 
"This book takes you on a developmental journey of psychological interventions and provides a good grounding in the subject. It is one of few that successfully endeavours to preserve the true meaning of the service user’s experience whilst promoting the importance of clinical effectiveness and evidence base. This is an ideal text for student nurses and qualified practitioners and is particularly rewarding given the balance of authors from a clinical, academic and research background."
Dr Joy A Duxbury, Head of Centre of Mental Health and Wellbeing, University of Central Lancashire, UK

"Whether you struggle with mental health as a service user, or a student embarking on a career in mental health nursing, you will find this book accessible and useful. It provides students and health professionals from a variety of backgrounds the opportunity to advance their knowledge and skills, and offers a developing and innovative approach that will place them at the forefront of mental health practice."
Robert Walker, Fellow Member of the Institute of Mental Health and Associate Expert for the School of Inclusion and Communities, UK 

Pictured:  Denise Parker (wrote the older adult chapter, Senior Lecturer at LJMU), Grahame Smith, (Principal Lecturer and Head of the Mental Health, Social Work and Counselling Department), Ged Carney (co-wrote the psychosis chapter, Merseycare Practitioner) and Rebecca Rylance (co-wrote the risk chapter Senior Lecturer/Practitioner)

Photo credit Mersey Care NHS Trust.