Discussion essay paper
Discussion
Rayma Morales
Social Support for Parents of Children with Chronic Mental Illness.Discussion
The parents of children with chronic mental illness have a lot of responsibilities in taking care of their children since they are regarded as the primary caregivers. These parents often suffer high levels of stress and depression while caring for their children (Chai et al., 2018). They concentrate more on meeting their children’s mental health needs and ignore theirs because they regard their children’s needs as more important. There are two types of social support interventions for parents of children with chronic mental illness; nurse-provided social support and social support provided by personal relationships and social networks. This paper will examine the influence that nursing models and theories have on research and practice on the best social support intervention for parents of children with chronic mental illness.Discussion
Nurse-provided social support creates social ties and communicative social exchanges between nurses and patients or caregivers to help them manage their illnesses, feel cared for, and establish personal control (Bjorlykhaug et al., 2021). Nurse-provided social support includes supportive care where nurses follow up on how the parents are doing emotionally and psychologically. Also, the nurses offer the parents a non-judgmental listening ear, give information where necessary, and give referrals to professionals who can help them. This approach effectively provides social support to parents of children who have a chronic mental illness because it helps them manage their stress levels.
Social support is provided through personal relationships, and social networks are people, organizations, or agencies that a caregiver can contact for support (Bjorlykhaug et al., 2021). Personal relationships create the best social support networks because they are friends and relatives who know these parents well and know how to make them feel better. Social networks can be online, agencies, or support groups that a person may be referred to for support. Personal relationships and social networks provide social support like physical assistance, resources and information sharing, emotional and psychological help, and positive attitude Discussion transmission. This form of support is more effective because the parents have a relationship with their support system. Also, it allows them to interact with people in similar situations, which gives them courage.
To conclude, both nurse-provided social support and social support provided by personal relationships and social networks effectively provide social support for parents of children with chronic mental illness. However, social support from personal relationships and social networks is more effective. The parents have a personal relationship with their support system or can relate to their situation, making it easy for them to help and listen to them.
References
Bjorlykhaug, K. I., Karlsson, B., Hesook, S. K., & Kleppe, L. C. (2021). Social Support and Recovery from Mental Health Problems: A Scoping Review. Nordic Social Work Research, 1-32.
Chai, Y. C., Mahadevan, R., Ng, C. G., Chan, L. F., & Md Dai, F. (2018). Caregiver Depression: The Contributing Role of Depression in Patients, Stigma, Social Support and Religiosity. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 64(6), 578-588.
496 words
Student: Alexander Martin Cabrera
Effectiveness of support from nursing professionals versus social support provided by personal relationships and social networks to parents of children with chronic mental illness.
Generally speaking, nurses understand how to support families during times of mental illness-which can be a difficult challenge for any healthcare team member (Reiss et al., 2019). Nurses are empathetic, understanding and non-judgmental when interacting with patients and their families. Nurses also provide education and emotional support when necessary. This care is crucial when caring for patients with mental health disorders.Discussion
Reiss et al. imply that providing support for mental health issues is crucial when interacting with patients themselves- especially during routine clinical duties. Nurses are in direct contact with patients daily, so that negativity can have severe consequences for people and families (Reiss et al., 2019). Supporting positive mental health can be challenging, but it is essential for both patients and families if they want to feel safe and secure in clinical environments. Therefore, nurses must learn how to avoid upsetting patients or to create an unsafe working environment for them and their families.
Taking care of mental health issues is challenging in any workplace; however, nursing professionals are uniquely equipped to handle these challenges successfully (Xu et al., 2018). They understand how to support patients and families during times of mental illness; they know how to recognize signs of mental health disorders, and they know how to create an emotionally safe work environment for everybody involved in healthcare.
On the other hand, on social help and network, parents of children with mental illness are often depressed, anxious and stressed (Pinquart, 2018). Parents face great difficulty managing their child’s illnesses and have trouble taking care of themselves because of their child’s illnesses.
Pinquart explains that friends and relatives help with daily grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning. These friends also provide moral support when the parents of mentally ill children cannot do so themselves. However, friends usually do not have enough time to provide all the needed support. People with mental illnesses themselves can be a source of support for the families of people with mental illnesses (Pinquart, 2018). Although they can sympathize with the family, they are preoccupied with their problems, making it challenging to offer help beyond what the law requires.
Currently, no federal law requires employers to provide any support to parents of people with mental illnesses, even if employed (Xu et al., 2018). Until there is more government funding for research into new psychiatric drugs, a population will always struggle with severe mental health conditions that need extra attention and understanding from society.
In conclusion, many people need support raising a child with a mental illness. Even though social support is vital to families affected, nursing professional support is effective in caring for the families of children with long-lasting mental illness.
References
Pinquart, M. (2018). Parenting stress in caregivers of children with chronic physical condition—A meta‐analysis. Stress and Health, 34(2), 197–207. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smi.2780
Reiss, F., Meyrose, A. K., Otto, C., Lampert, T., Klasen, F., & Ravens-Sieberer, U. (2019). Socioeconomic status, stressful life situations and mental health problems in children and adolescents: The German BELLA cohort study results. PloSone, 14(3), e0213700. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213700
Xu, Z., Huang, F., Koesters, M., Staiger, T., Becker, T., Thornicroft, G., & Ruesch, N. (2018). Effectiveness of interventions to promote help-seeking for mental health problems: systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 48(16), 2658-2667. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/effectiveness-of-interventions-to-promote-helpseeking-for-mental-health-problems-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis/E41C8BB5F59352438F977471EC0383AF
Esthela
Social Support for Parents of Children with Chronic Mental Illness
Children’s Mental health is essential to their overall health and well-being. Mental illnesses in children typically affect learning, behavior, and emotional control. These mental conditions often cause distress in the children’s families as the entire household struggles with ways of coping and dealing with the challenges associated with these diseases. Children’s most commonly diagnosed conditions are attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, and behavior disorders (CDC, 2022). Parents of children diagnosed with mental illness as often significantly impacted since they are the leading caregivers in most cases. Thus, it is essential to ensure they receive social support in fulfilling their parental duties and caring for their children.
Generally, these parents can access professional social support services or rely on personal relationships and their social networks. These interventions have their pros and cons. For instance, nurse-provided or professional social support is advantageous since parents can benefit from training on how to manage difficult behavior in their children positively. Additionally, professional care grants access to interventions like family-focused counseling and access to relevant information on strategies for dealing with children who have mental conditions. The overarching potential drawbacks to seeking professional or nurse-provided social support services are related to access and cost. In some settings, parents with children with mental conditions cannot afford professional help or lack access to human resources to assist them.
Conversely, these parents can also rely on personal relationships and social networks to assist them in dealing with their mentally ill children. Social network is a framework that defines an individual’s social relationships and the nature of the ties that bind them to others. These relationships can serve as buffers to stress. Being surrounded by familiar faces enhances the parents’ functional support and coping strategies. In addition, these personal relationships and social networks make it easier to marshal resources, such as financial support, to assist the parents in the treatment journey of their children.
However, despite some advantages to relying on social networks, this approach can be limited in various ways. First, it is dependent on the willingness of individuals within the social network to assist, which is not always the case. Secondly, individuals within the social support network may lack the knowledge to offer the parents meaningful help. In addition, this approach is subject to variability over time in the availability of members of a social network depending on the illness severity and setting. In lieu of these glaring disadvantages, professional or nurse-provided social support is the most efficacious intervention for parents of children with mental illness.
Reference
CDC (2022) Data and statistics on children’s Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html (Accessed: October 26, 2022).
Brooks, H., Devereux-Fitzgerald, A., Richmond, L., Bee, P., Lovell, K., Caton, N., … & Rogers, A. (2022). Assessing the effectiveness of social network interventions for adults with a diagnosis of mental health problems: a systematic review and narrative synthesis of impact. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 1-19.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-022-02242-w
Elisabeth La Rotta Nunez
10/26/22
Social Support
The aim of both professional/nurse-provided and personal relationship/social network-provided social support is to help parents of children with chronic mental illnesses cope with the prevailing conditions. Both are necessary as often, the parents’ mental health ends up neglected as the child’s mental healthcare takes priority. However, there are significant differences in their respective mechanisms and effectiveness, which have been discussed in detail below.
Nurse-provided social support takes advantage of nurses’ educational training and experiences in psychiatric units. It provides support that is more professionally oriented. Potential effectiveness, therefore, can be measured in terms of the nurses’ efficiency in delivering informational, emotional and social support. Parents of children with chronic mental illness will thus benefit from consistent information, affirmation, encouragement, and clarification in addition to personalized mental healthcare. As Adamus (2022) asserts, it is impossible to achieve mental health without professional support, especially for parents of children with chronic mental illnesses.
Support from a personal relationship and social networks is subject to personal views, attitudes, beliefs and probably misconceptions regarding a specific health condition, in this case, chronic mental health (Shalaby & Agyapong, 2020). Therefore, social support from people and social networks which have already branded a condition in a specific way might not be as effective as support from a healthcare professional, whose bases of support provision is only based on the scientific truth of the condition at hand. Due to this, is is thus correct to put it that professional provided social support tends to be more effective than personal and social networks social support.
Moreover, there exists increased chances that personal and social network social support will only concentrate on one issue, which is the child’s chronic mental illness (Shalaby & Agyapong, 2020). On the other hand, nurse provided social support can be regarded as holistic because a nurse may consider aspects such as religion and cultural beliefs when offering their social support. As a result, the parents will feel that their identity is recognized which opens up an avenue for extensive sharing. In such situations, parents will likely open up the most hidden issues that may disturbing them, increasing the chances that they will get all the help they might need in regard to coping with the fact that their child is chronically ill.
Additionally, professionals understand situations better, possibly due to the level of training and/or experience in their respective lines of duty (Chan et al., 2019). Having a professional nurse rather than a personal or social networks based social support will likely be more effective due to expertise. Even if the professionals have not dealt with a similar case before, they have been trained on how to approach such situations to ensure that their beneficiaries receive the best possible care
References
Adamus, C., Alpiger, J., Jäger, M., Richter, D., & Mötteli, S. (2022). Independent Supported Housing Versus Institutionalised Residential Rehabilitation for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness: A Survey of Attitudes and Working Conditions Among Mental Healthcare Professionals. Community mental health journal, 1-9.
Chan, C. W. H., Ng, N. H. Y., Chan, H. Y., Wong, M. M., & Chow, K. M. (2019). A systematic review of the effects of advance care planning facilitators training programs. BMC health services research, 19(1), 1-14.
Shalaby, R. A. H., & Agyapong, V. I. (2020). Peer support in mental health: literature review. JMIR Mental Health, 7(6), e15572.
