Therapeutic Skills for Mental Health Nurses

Covers the practical therapeutic skills needed by mental health nursing students.

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Most specialist mental health care is provided by nurses who use face to face helping skills with a wide range of people in a variety of contexts. This book puts therapeutic skills at the heart of the nurse’s role, with one central aim: to equip you with knowledge to use in your practice, thus improving your ability to deliver care.

This book:

• Will enable you to strengthen your  core therapeutic skills and broaden your knowledge to include other practical therapeutic approaches
• Collates in one place information on a range of therapeutic approaches, from person centred counselling, motivational interviewing and solution focused approaches, through to day to day skills of challenging unhelpful thoughts, de-escalating difficult situations, working with families, and problem solving
• Demonstrates application of theory to practice through a variety of practical examples
• Features reader activities to facilitate personal growth and learning
• Includes a chapter exploring clinical supervision and how this makes practice more effective

Each chapter is grounded in authentic clinical experiences and focuses on equipping the reader to develop confidence in their client facing skills. This text is an essential purchase for all mental health nurse students as well as qualified nurses.

"Whilst the essential therapeutic component of mental health nursing is the nurse themselves, it is also essential that they have knowledge and competencies to offer the client. This valuable book offers the reader an introduction to a wide range of approaches that are considered helpful, evidence based and effective. Modern mental health nursing requires much of its practitioners; this book will help inform and support that endeavour."
Ian Hulatt, Mental Health Adviser, Royal College of Nursing, UK

“This is a timely book which addresses, head on, questions about what mental health nurses can do to be effective with their patients. At last we have a book that mental health nurses can draw on to understand why and how various therapeutic approaches are used. The range is from cognitive behavioural therapy, to psychodynamic approaches to mindfulness, with others in between.

Each chapter is written by an expert and each offers concrete examples of what it involved in each of the approaches. These examples are imperative if readers are to understand how to use interventions in their everyday work.

This ground breaking book will be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the care of those with mental health problems. A wonderful book.”
Philip Burnard, Emeritus Professor of Nursing, Cardiff University, UK