- Chapter
Chapter 1: Introduction to mental health and mental illness: Human connectedness and the collaborative consumer narrative
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Summary
This chapter reflects a coming together of key issues and themes embedded in everyday work with consumers and carers. In recent times, the definition of a carer has expanded to include immediate family and friends, and may also include extended family members such as grandparents and cousins. In transcultural and other contexts, it is important to use humanistic language in line with a recovery approach; for example, the terms ‘support person/people’ and ‘support networks’ may be preferable to the term ‘carer’ in mental health practice and mental health nursing. This approach provides a foundation for human connectedness, and sets the consumer narrative as central to mental health practice and mental health nursing, specifically.The chapter introduces students to a narrative-based understanding of mental health and trauma-informed mental health care, as well as key concepts in mental health and mental illness. It discusses mental health nursing as a collaborative, specialised field of nursing.
Keywords
- mental health
- person-centred care
- trauma-informed care
- stigma
- mental illness
- collaborative
- mental health carer
- mental health consumer
- mental health practitioner
About the book
- Chapter DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108980883.003
- Book DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108980883
- Subjects Health and Medicine,Nursing and Midwifery,Psychiatry,Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology
- Format: Paperback
- Publication date: 10 November 2022
- ISBN: 9781108984621
- Format: Digital
- Publication date: 07 April 2022
- ISBN: 9781108980883
- Find out more details about this book
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