Therapeutic Relationships in Mental Health Settings
Online Course for Front-line Mental Health Professionals that will help them understand Psychotic States and improve Risk Assessment.
Therapeutic relationships are fundamental to high-quality mental health care. Yet, mental health clinicians constantly face the delicate balance between providing the least restrictive care and ensuring patient safety. This challenge hinges on accurately assessing patients' risk—a highly dynamic assessment influenced by the patient's environment, perception of care, and mental state.
Consider a patient who appears stable in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) but becomes distressed when transferred to an acute admission ward or engages with community services post-discharge. This shift often stems from their aversion to the stigma and reminders associated with ongoing psychiatric care. Such patients may resist medication, avoid therapy, or attempt to leave treatment altogether. While it's natural to empathize with this response, it raises critical questions: Are they denying their condition and the need for ongoing psychiatric care? Is this rooted in a more profound discomfort with their illness and its implications?
For patients with chronic mental health conditions, individualized, compassionate care is crucial. Effective services should prioritize long-term therapeutic relationships, offering continuity and fostering deeper insights into the patient's struggles beyond immediate symptoms.
Front-line mental health professionals face immense pressure—juggling limited inpatient beds, high-risk community cases, and the tension between least restrictive care and patient autonomy. These challenges highlight the critical need for informed, compassionate, and skilled practitioners in mental health care.
Psychotic states are inherently unpredictable, complicating risk assessment as mental states fluctuate rapidly. Clinicians must recognize that patients in psychosis may present as stable while masking severe symptoms, leading to inaccurate evaluations if not carefully considered.
This comprehensive online course is designed to support front-line mental health staff by enhancing their understanding of psychotic states of mind. The goal is to improve risk assessment accuracy and therapeutic engagement, equipping practitioners with tools to navigate the complexities of mental health care.We welcome nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, social workers and other mental health practitioners to this eight-part course. Relationships are central to working with mental health patients. If we understand what happens between our patients and us, ourselves, and staff, we can help them much more. Psychoanalysis offers such ways of understanding, and this is what this course aims to do.
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