Hope and interpersonal psychiatric/mental health nursing: a systematic review of the literature – part two

Abstract

This is the second of a two-part article which reports on a systematic review of the literature that focuses on hope (inspiring hope) within interpersonal (counselling) focused psychiatric/mental health (P/MH) nursing. Part one focused on the first three substantive areas, whereas this article focuses on the remaining areas and the discussion points arising out of the review. The discussion points arising are: (1) despite the increasing attention to hope over the last three decades, there remains a distinct paucity of research pertaining to P/MH nurses and hope, hoping and hopelessness; (2) the research that has been undertaken thus far lacks a cumulative, sequential progressive focus and has more of a sporadic, disparate look to it; (3) there is a dearth of empirical work to underpin specific interventions; (4) this relative absence of empirical work means that P/MH nurses often have to look to allied and/or related disciplines for their hope-related research; (5) there appears to be a disparity between the alleged importance of hope and the subsequent research activity; and (6) the research that does exist across different substantive areas appears to indicate that there might be common or shared basic psychosocial processes of hope inspiration, and thus the probability of a formal grounded theory; and this allows for idiosyncratic psychosocial processes for each substantive area. As a result of this review, the authors tentatively suggest that the inspiration of hope in P/MH nursing is grounded in the relationship established between nurse and person in need of hope, an emerging empirical finding that has obvious congruence and synchronicity with the philosophy and theory of a Peplauvian-based approach to P/MH nursing.