Culturally sensitive mental health care: a module for 21st century education and practice.

As the United Kingdom becomes increasingly culturally diverse, we are tasked with becoming more attuned to complex cultures, health beliefs and practices. The routes toward this demographic trend and related issues of population movement are complex and have a significant impact on those engaged in meeting the needs of clients with mental health problems and their families. This paper is the result of a small study undertaken to explore the current extend of cultural awareness of a group of mental health practitioners working with clients across a range of health care settings.

Back to the future: making a case for including the history of mental health nursing in nurse education programmes.

Reflections on nursing history, the nature of its workforce and its evolution as a profession can be powerful tools in the development of professional identity. Historical accounts of mental health nurses' practice and how they are socially, politically and culturally positioned within a particular time frame serve to illustrate that as practitioners we are precariously placed within a certain point in history. This paper emphasises the importance of mental health nursing historical research within nurse education curricula as a means of situating current theories, practice and professional identity.

Perspectives of cultural competence in health care.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the views of one group of healthcare professionals on the importance of cultural awareness in healthcare practice.

Method: A qualitative approach was used. Ten nurses of varying age from two counties in Scotland who worked across a range of clinical practice areas were interviewed.

Talking the talk: a discourse analysis of mental health nurses talking about their practice.

Mental Health nursing exists as a discipline in the UK within the wider contemporary health care establishment. Throughout its history it has attempted to define itself in ways that differentiate mental health nursing practice from other health care professions and fields of nursing. However, it is not surprising in this climate of contemporary healthcare for individual professional identities to become 'lost' in the melange of interdisciplinary practice.

Childhood and teenage pregnancies.

Childhood and teenage pregnancy poses a significant social and health problem in the UK and it has implications for nurses across a wide range of disciplines. This article aims to raise awareness of the issue and help nurses to identify the risks of early sexual activity and pregnancy for young people. It includes the views of a group of first year, undergraduate nurses who took part in discussions on the topic while taking a module concerned with current health priorities.

Social constructionism, discourse analysis and mental health nursing: a natural synergy.

This paper has been developed to identify the natural synergy between social constructionism, discourse analysis and mental health research. It is based on research undertaken to explore mental health nurses' identity. The proposal is that nurses' identities are rhetorically constructed in the language they use to account for and justify their work in the practice context.