Towards a new (or rearticulated) philosophy of mental health nursing: A dialogue‐on‐dialogue

Abstract

The following dialogue takes up recent calls within nursing scholarship to critically imagine alternative nursing futures through the relational process of call and response. Towards this end, the dialogue builds on letters which we, the authors, exchanged as part of the 25th International Nursing Philosophy Conference in 2022. In these letters, we asked of ourselves and each other: If we were to think about a new philosophy of mental health nursing, what are some of the critical questions that we would need to ask? What warrants exploration? In thinking through these questions, our letters facilitated a collaborative enquiry in which philosophy and theory were generative tools for thinking beyond what is and towards what is yet to come. In this paper, we expand the dialogue within these letters—in a ‘dialogue‐on‐dialogue’—and take up one thread of our discussion to argue that a new philosophy of mental health nursing must rethink the relationships between ‘practitioner’/‘self’ and ‘self’/‘other’ if it is to create a radically different future. Further, we posit solidarity and public love as possible alternatives to foregrounding the ‘work’ of mental health nursing. The possibilities we present here should be received as partial, contingent and unfinished. Indeed, our purpose in this paper is to provoke discussion and, in so doing, to model what we believe is a necessary shift towards criticality in our communities of nursing scholarship.

On the bullshitisation of mental health nursing: A reluctant work rant

“…It is worth noting that this focus on care as an organising force risks revisiting a human‐centric ideology. However, I believe it remains possible to speak of care, along with alienation, within a posthumanist frame that does not completely reject earlier relational, feminist and left politics, as for example reflected in the work of Haraway (see de la Bellacasa, 2012; Collier‐Sewell & Melino, 2023; Hopkins‐Walsh et al, 2023).…”

Mental health deserves better: Resisting the dilution of specialist pre‐registration mental health nurse education in the United Kingdom

“…In addition, mental health nurse activity involves undertaking risk assessment and management, understanding recovery principles, person and family‐centred care, having good communication skills, a sense of humour, knowledge about mental distress and diagnoses and treatment, being able to evaluate research, promote physical health and physical and psychological interventions (Moyo et al, 2022). Nonetheless, despite this formidable list of activities, the core of the role may perhaps be found in the following quote; ‘the most powerful ‘interventions’ occurred where the professional mask dropped and, even momentarily, there was authentic human‐to‐human connection’ (Collier‐Sewell & Melino, 2023, p. 3). This cocktail of unique skills, most valued through genuine human connection, cannot be tick‐boxed after being taught quickly or read from a textbook alone.…”

Special issue guest editorial: The thoughts we think with—As philosophers, as nurses—Matter

“…Extending the conversation further, Iradukunda's (2023) dialogue piece interrogates the discourses of decolonization, so readily adopted, so rarely substantiated. Picking up nursing's futures, Collier‐Sewell and Melino (2023) contemplate the place of philosophy in mental health nursing, expanding on a letter‐writing experiment, imagining futures, raising questions, and challenging normative language for thinking alterations in mental health. In a ‘polylogue’, Laurin and collaborators (2023) invite readers to converge in space and time in ‘Mattering: Per/forming Nursing Philosophy in the Chthulucene’, a critical posthuman challenge to the boundaries, methods, and conventions of nursing, philosophy, and nursing philosophy, recounting and recreating their conference panel.…”