Theories in Mental Health Care
These organized explanations help nurses understand behavior, identify client needs, and select appropriate interventions.
Theories
This group of theories explains personality and emotional growth as occurring through predictable stages across the lifespan.
Developmental theories
According to Maslow, these needs—including oxygen, food, water, sleep, and elimination—must be addressed before higher-level needs.
Physiological needs
This theory proposes that emotions and behavior are influenced by how an individual interprets events.
Cognitive theory
This field examibiology, nes how genetics, brain structures, neurotransmitters, hormones, and other biological processes influence mental health.
Psychobiology
A nurse uses a theoretical framework to organize assessment findings and plan individualized care. This demonstrates that theories provide this for clinical practice.
Systematic guide for understanding and responding to client behavior
Erikson proposed that individuals face a specific psychosocial conflict during each of these.
Developmental stages
A highly anxious client reports feeling unsafe and has not eaten for two days. According to Maslow, the nurse should first address the client’s nutrition and this need.
Safety
A client says, “I failed one test, so I am a complete failure.” The nurse identifies this as an example of what?
Cognitive distortion
The study of psychobiology has increased understanding of how changes in serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine may contribute to these conditions.
Mental disorders and emotional symptoms
Freud’s theory emphasizes unconscious conflicts, early childhood experiences, and the influence of the id, ego, and superego. This is known as what?
Psychoanalytic theory
This viewpoint emphasizes personal growth, free will, self-awareness, and the individual’s potential to become fully functioning.
Humanistic viewpoint
This theory views the individual as part of an interconnected whole in which changes in one area affect all other areas.
Systems theory
This theoretical perspective examines how family, culture, poverty, discrimination, social roles, and community conditions affect mental health.
Sociocultural theory
Peplau’s nursing theory emphasizes the therapeutic relationship between the nurse and client. This theory is known as what?
Interpersonal relations theory
Free association, dream analysis, and analysis of transference are three therapeutic techniques that developed from this theorist’s work.
Sigmund Freud
This theory focuses on observable behavior and proposes that behavior is learned through conditioning, reinforcement, and consequences.
Behavioral theory
The tendency of a person or system to maintain internal stability and balance is called this.
Homeostasis
Selye described the body’s response to prolonged stress as alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Together, these stages are called what?
General adaptation syndrome
Individual, group, and family therapy are three forms of this treatment based primarily on communication and therapeutic interaction.
Psychotherapy
A client begins treating the nurse as though the nurse were a critical parent. In psychoanalytic theory, this behavior is called what?
Transference
A nurse praises a client each time the client attends group therapy. This intervention is an example of this behavioral technique.
Positive reinforcement
A family changes its routines after one member develops severe depression. From a systems perspective, this occurs because a change in one family member affects this.
A client experiencing long-term stress develops fatigue, frequent infections, and difficulty coping. According to Selye, the client may be entering this stage.
Exhaustion stage
Psychotherapy uses communication and psychological techniques, whereas medications, electroconvulsive therapy, and other physical treatments belong to this category.
Somatic therapies