13.0: Introduction
Nursing care of clients includes physical, spiritual, cultural, psychosocial, and psychological care. Many clients the nurse will work with will have current or past mental health issues that need to be considered when addressing their needs. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act and also determines how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.
When an individual is diagnosed with a mental illness, nonpharmacologic therapies such as counseling or therapy often are used in combination with pharmacologic agents. Psychopharmacology is the use of psychotropic medications (drugs that affect mood, behaviors, thoughts, and perceptions) to treat mental illness. Psychotropic drugs target miscellaneous neurotransmitters and/or their receptors for effect. Drugs are mainly used to mitigate clinical manifestations of a psychological process. This chapter will focus on several of the common mental health disorders and their management.