Knowledge and practice in mental health nursing care

Abstract

Objective: To understand mental health nursing care based on the concept of the subject of the unconscious proposed by Lacan. Method: A narrative study was carried out with 19 nurses, chosen based on their theoretical approach or referral by other participants, through the snowball sampling technique. The interviews were carried out in person or digitally, and were recorded and fully transcribed. Results: The analysis was carried out based on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, approaching nursing care as it acts on the body, secretions, and excretions, to distinguish it from the spirit of fineness. Effects on care are discussed, considering the subject of the unconscious with its knowledge, creating unique exits (sinthome). In this situation, professionals are required to abstain from a position of knowing what is better for the Other. Final considerations: This nursing care perspective offers contributions when discussing the centrality of the subject and words in the care process.

From alienation to the nursing clinic: care of patients with psychiatric comorbidity

“…Starting from the implementation of new equipment, post-Psychiatric Reform, there was the possibility of constructing an extended clinic structured with a basis on the subject in suffering and that, through reception and care, may contribute to the articulation of the subject in their territory, and not outside it, heightening the potential of transformations on the subject and society (16) .…”

Psychiatric nursing and mental health teaching in relation to Brazilian curriculum

“…In the 1950s, Brazilian universities included Psychoanalysis in the curriculum, although Freud's studies had already been referenced among Brazilian physicians and psychiatrists since the 19th century (41)(42) . This and other psychological currents participated in the contents of psychiatric nursing teaching, with little influence, since care assistance and practice did not involve actions that valued psychological aspects of human behavior (13,30,35) .…”

The intersection between being a nurse and being a therapist in Mental Health

“…Then, there is the possibility and potentiality of nurses putting themselves in a relationship of equality, human-to-human (5) and in this uniqueness, discovering with instruments such as poetry, music and embroidery, what potencies nurses bring with themselves, and thus, they affect themselves and affect the other. That is a situation of nurses being therapists.…”

“…By proposing greater space for dialogue and expression of emotions of people cared for, some nurses report being considered by them, and even by their colleagues, as psychologists. Nurses must build new conceptions and perspectives, find a shift, some dialectic between the care performed in the body and the care guided by the word (5) , although without being stereotyped as psychologists, because subjective care should be understood as nurses' role.…”