ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the care that is provided by the mental health nurse, and discusses specific features of the role and function of the contemporary mental health nurse. It examines the important issues of privacy and confidentiality in the context of providing safe, responsible and therapeutic nursing care. While nursing more generally has its role origins of domestic servitude, the mental health nurse role begins in a non-nursing occupation in eighteenth-century asylums. The distinction between the role of the medical–surgical general nurse and the mental health nurse begins with their tools of trade. The function of the contemporary mental health nurse is substantially different from that of the general medical–surgical nurse, and has altered considerably over the past few decades. The chapter also explores and discusses the dynamic interactive process of relationships in mental health nursing care. The shift of mental health nursing from a custodial and handmaiden role gathered momentum in the Western world during the 1960s.