Working Effectively With Mentally Ill Home Care Patients
Being employed as a home health aide with mentally ill patients requires a special sensitivity to the needs from the mentally challenged. Too often, people often consider the mentally challenged as being somehow inferior and as such, they have a tendency to talk right down to them. However, exactly what the mentally ill really need is what other people needs – they need somebody that will take them seriously and ensure their needs are met while providing them with just as much freedom as possible.
Just What Is Mental Illness?
Before we can begin to discuss how to work effectively with mentally ill home care patients, you need to understand what mental illness actually means. Let’s move on with the most basic definition after which get into a more detailed explanation. At its simplest, mental illness implies that someone is not capable of functioning independently in society because of some type of problems with the way they go through the world emotionally. Exactly how this manifests itself and exactly what the issues are do require additional explanation however.
Some indicators that the person may be mentally challenged include:
Inability to Develop and keep Healthy Relationships – Many mentally ill people discover it difficult or impossible to produce healthy interpersonal relationships.
Lack of Impulse Control – Another common problem for mentally challenged individuals is really a lack of impulse control. Many mentally challenged individuals will for instance do things in public or perhaps private that mentally sound people won’t do (i.e. scream out loud at nobody particularly, cause harm, public urination, etc.).
Inability to Tolerate Anxiety and Frustration – We all deal with anxiety and frustration every day. However, those who are mentally challenged often find they cannot handle any (or very little) anxiety and or frustration in daily life.
Inability to Respect Others – Finally, many mentally ill people find it hard to respect others, when it comes to private space and or in terms of regular verbal abuse.
It is important to realize that the above mentioned list includes stuff that even mentally healthy individuals experience every once in awhile. The important thing difference is the fact that mentally challenged individuals are experiencing these things regularly and can don’t have the impulse control to show normal behavior most of the time.
Cause of Mental Illness
Mental illness is a disease and typically a chronic disease much like diabetes, arthritis or RLS. In other words, mental illness isn’t the fault of the individual experiencing it and also the mentally challenged should not be designed to shame their disability. Some common causes of mental illness include:
Physical Factors – Trauma to the head, in both childhood or adulthood can cause permanent mental illness to occur.
Chemical Imbalance – Many mentally ill individuals have a chemical imbalance in the brain which can sometimes be corrected through the use of medication.
Environmental Factors – Finally, mental illness can be either temporarily or permanently brought on by environmental factors. For instance, children who are subjected to severe trauma often develop to be mentally challenged individuals who can experience lifelong problems. Victims of terror attacks or violent crime also sometimes develop either temporary or permanent mental illnesses as a result of their experiences.
Kinds of Mental Illness
Mental illness often takes on the number of different forms. These include:
Anxiety – We all experience a certain amount of anxiety within our lives. However, those people who are mentally challenged may experience severe anxiety that is disproportionate to the problems they happen to be experiencing.
Fears – Similar to anxiety, fears within the mentally ill will include severe, crippling phobias which aren’t found amongst ordinary people. For example, a regular person may be repulsed by the concept of being near a wide open sewer. However, the person will have such paranoia from being close to the open sewer that he may refuse to leave his home for fear of the possibility of passing by an open sewer.
Depression – Again, while we all feel an ordinary amount of depression every once in awhile, someone who is mentally challenged are experiencing severe depression, often for no reason other than being depressed.
Paranoia – Finally, mentally challenged individuals may experience severe paranoia enough where they’re unable to function in society.
You should note that a lot of your house health care patients dealing with mental illness can recover and lead normal lives, through either therapy or medication and sometimes through a mixture of the two. Thus, they might need help only on a temporary basis instead of on the permanent basis.
The position
As a home healthcare worker with individuals facing mental challenges, there are a number of stuff that you must do to guarantee the security and development of your charges. These include:
Record Keeping
You will have to keep careful tabs on your patient’s emotional states. What this means is observing alterations in behavior and noting what might have precipitated them. It’s also wise to note set up change can last for an extended period of time or if it is a temporary change.
Your mentally challenged patients could also experience changes in behavior that are of a positive nature. Thus, you need to note when and if such changes occur and also to note changes in personality, either for the good or the bad.
When you should note environmental factors surrounding such alterations in behavior, it is important to not draw conclusions on your own as to what precipitated these changes. Instead, you should note just the facts and allow mental health professionals to make such diagnoses.
Making Sure Patients are Cared For
It is important as a home health care worker dealing with mentally ill individuals to ensure that they’re complying using their treatment regimen. This means for instance that you need to make sure that the individual is taking their medication promptly and in the right doses.
You must also watch carefully to make sure that dangerous behaviors do not put your patients in harm’s way. When danger does present itself, you need to call 911 to obtain emergency workers to help cope with the issues instead of trying to cope with it on your own. For instance, if your mentally challenged patient overdoses on sleeping pills, you need to call 911 immediately instead of try to induce vomiting by yourself.
Provide Patients with a Path to Recovery
Finally, your role as a home healthcare worker would be to facilitate the patient’s road to recovery. This means that you train with them to ensure that they will have the best type of support to cope with their problems and you help with keeping the household involved as well within the recovery from the mentally challenged patient that you use like a home healthcare worker.