Evidence-based psychiatric/mental health nursing

Psychiatric/mental health nursing is often like a house divided. Even the double name commonly used to describe our specialty—psychiatric/mental health—reflects possible ambivalence or duality of purpose, or both. It should not surprise anyone that our attempts to implement evidence-based practice mirror this struggle. Mental health nurses initially defined our practice as an interpersonal therapeutic process to assist the client in growth.1–3 This was in synchrony with psychiatry's earlier focus on psychotherapy as the treatment for mental illness. The division in mental health nursing occurred when psychiatry moved to a more biological perspective. Should mental health nursing follow this route or continue to focus on counselling and process issues? Both the “therapeutic relationship” and “biology” camps have used evidence-based arguments to buttress their positions. It could be argued that all the psychiatric/mental health professions experience this struggle, but it has been a particularly open struggle in nursing. The struggle is present in our literature. Gournay's article, “Schizophrenia: a review of the contemporary literature and implications for mental health nursing theory, practice and education,” is an example of this struggle.4 The main purpose of this article was to review the literature on schizophrenia from a biological perspective, including the aetiology, epidemiology, and …