ABSTRACT
This chapter explores theories, conceptual frameworks and conceptual models, models of nursing practice, new and emerging theories and models, and evidence-based practice to the extent that these topics fit with readers growing understanding of the unique and special practice skills that make up mental health nursing care. The framework provides readers with structural supports and specific areas to become rooms. In a metaphorical sense, the conceptual framework houses reader theoretical terms, meanings and even the set of assumptions and phenomena about the nature of the theory that is being housed. The medical model operates on the basis of the scientific or empirical knowledge of ‘cause and effect’, and this fact alone may provide the main focus of limitations for this model. The core principles of the medical model are the diagnosis, treatment and cure of disease; hence the values and attitudes engendered by the medical model may be different from the values and attitudes of nurses.
