Assessment task

Felix is a 20 year old single man, currently working in marketing full time.

Felix has no significant past medical history or past mental health history. Felix did experience childhood abuse at the age of 10 prior to his parent’s marital breakdown. Following the breakdown of the marriage, Felix’s mother had difficulty caring for Felix due to her own poor mental health, so he was often left after school by himself. He has little contact with his family, and only a few friends who he now infrequently contacts.

Felix describes feeling anxious most of the time and often “worries about anything and everything”. He is often fatigued, has difficulty concentrating and in making decisions, and often then worries about making the wrong decision. He describes being irritable and not being able to relax, has poor sleep and has increased his alcohol consumption as a way to cope with stress and his feelings of anxiousness. He reports he is currently drinking a bottle of whisky each night. Recently this has caused issues with his work, as he is not meeting deadlines. His boss has informed him that if he doesn’t start performing as expected, he will be asked to leave. He reports a low mood and often feels that people would be “better off without him”. Felix states that he has had thoughts of harming himself.

Due to a deterioration in his mental health, Felix has been admitted to an acute mental health unit and prescribed 5mgs of diazepam TDS and 10mg of escitalopram daily, by the admitting psychiatrist.

Considering Felix’s presentation, discuss key management priorities and interventions/strategies that are holistic, patient centred and recovery focused that you as a mental health nurse would use in order to support the care for Felix whilst admitted to the acute mental health unit and also on discharge to his home.

• Anxiety and Distress

Not being able to relax

• Suicidal ideation and self-harm
• High alcohol consumption

·         Poor sleep

·         Fatigue and difficulty in concentrating

·         Lack of family support and poor social network

·         To manage the anxiety and stress and prevent self-harm.

·         Assess risk factors (for suicide or self-harm) and protective factors

·         Encourage a balanced diet

·         Improve sleep cycle

·         Ensure Flix engages in counselling

·         To encourage Flix to change his thinking patterns, promoting more positive thoughts and actions and less maladaptive thoughts and behaviours.

·

·         DBT

•             Educate about relaxation activities, Meditation and relaxation method such as yuga, mindfulness swimming, aroma therapy , music therapy and …..

•             counselling

•             Encourage client to use techniques to manage and tolerate anxiety

•             Encourage social support

•             Exposure therapy

•             Referral to a psychologist( after discharge)

•             Reduce the amount of alcohol intake daily. Alcohol withdrawel management

·         -Take vital signs

·         -educate about sleep hygiene(cool room, dark, no noise , ….)

•             Doing risk assessment and evaluate what type of risk he is in and tailor our strategies around our assessment

·         Connect him to community groups

, Peer groups to extend his social network

·         about medication- how it can help

•             Education about side effects of medication

·         assess his ability for  medication compliance for after being discharge