Community Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Practice and Challenges

Abstract

Due to the rising incidence of social risk incidents, the Mental Health Act was amended to provide community treatment and community support for patients with mental illness. Community mental health centers have added a public sector function to follow-up with the care of mentally ill patients using case management as an integrated service model. Under this amendment, the unique role and task of community psychiatric mental healthcare should be framed and developed. The National Health Research Institutes have advocated recovery-oriented case management as a mental health policy. Thus, in line with this policy, the authors developed a need-tailored recovery program led by nurses that has demonstrated significant effectiveness with regard to the recovery of mentally ill patients. Also, a mobile-care platform was subsequently developed to assess the care needs of community-dwelling patients with mental illness, implement recovery-oriented care, and evaluate its effectiveness, which may be incorporated into evidence-based community psychiatric mental healthcare guidelines. To improve the practice of community psychiatric mental health nursing, this article addresses key community nursing contexts, including: psychiatric home treatment and care, community mental health centers, the needs-tailored recovery-oriented case management model, and the roles and certification of community psychiatric mental health nurses promoted by the psychiatric mental health nurses association. Finally, future challenges and strategies are proposed to improve the quality of community psychiatric mental healthcare and to assist patients move from mental disorder to recovery.