The national review of mental health nursing in Scotland: implications for the profession

Therapeutic alliance in mental health nursing: an evolutionary concept analysis

The concept of therapeutic alliance is relevant in contemporary mental health care, as the consumer-led recovery movement promotes the development of collaborative relationships, and is focussed on the consumer's individual concept of wellbeing. An evolutionary concept analysis was undertaken to establish a contemporary interpretation of therapeutic alliance for mental health nursing. The CINAHL, Scopus and PsycINFO databases were searched for articles (n = 322), with 52 deemed appropriate for analysis. Therapeutic alliance is characterised by mutual partnerships between nurses and consumers, and is dependent on a humanistic healthcare culture. Therapeutic alliance is associated with enhanced consumer outcomes and experiences with care.

Community mental health centres: a qualitative study of professionals' experiences

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of mental health work in community mental health centres with a multiprofessional workforce and aims of active user participation in the service. User participation implies collaborative relationships and different roles than that of expert professionals and dependent patients. How do professionals working in these services experience their work and professional role? This question was explored in order to highlight important aspects of community mental health work. A group of six experienced professionals from three community mental health centres in a Norwegian city were interviewed twice. The informants highlighted the complexity of community mental health work and the need to be flexible when working to support people with mental health problems in their everyday life situation. To see the service users as people and to facilitate social interaction was important. Their work was described as 'liberating' compared to working in institutions. However, although in their experience they found that professional knowledge and skills were important in their work situation, all had experienced that this was not always acknowledged by professionals in other services.