Mental and Sexual Health
Mental and Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Guide
Mental Health
Mental health is the ability to adapt to and accept life situations in an acceptable manner. Some believe this definition aligns with the concept of intelligence. We can also define it as self-awareness, self-control, and personal responsibility for one’s actions. Realize that you are responsible for your actions and the consequences in your life.
Physical and Mental Wellbeing
Health is the harmony between what we want and what we have. Nurses must understand a patient’s background to understand their reactions. Knowing past problems and significant life events is crucial. Factors influencing mental health include inherited characteristics, childhood experiences, and life circumstances.
Mental Illness
Mental illness is an impaired ability to respond effectively, characterized by maladaptive behavior and impaired functioning.
Neurosis
A nervous disorder without organic lesions. Individuals are aware of what is happening; it’s an exaggeration of reality where real facts overwhelm without organic disorder. Actions are inadequate. Symptoms stem from normal pathological reactions, but their intensity disrupts the patient. They usually report symptoms they want to avoid but cannot. For example, someone always striving for perfect scores might become frustrated and obsessed with a lower grade, leading to mental rumination. Focusing on the problem prevents enjoyment of life.
Psychosis
A disorder with or without an organic basis, altering mental function and interfering with insight (self-awareness), judgment, and the ability to meet daily demands. It disrupts contact with reality. Normal psychic harmony is broken, leading to illogical, unreasonable, and absurd reactions. The patient is unaware of what is happening. It is often a chronic disease.
Autism
Characterized by emotional withdrawal, refuge in one’s inner world, and a break from reality, similar to the immersion experienced by schizophrenics due to psychic splitting or dissociation.
Mood Disorders
May include emotional freezing, blunted affect, lack of attunement, inadequate mimicry, apathy, emotional paradoxes (joy from sadness, and vice versa), and inconsistency.
Neuroleptic Drugs (Antipsychotics)
Examples include Haloperidol, fluphenazine decanoate, clozapine, zuclopenthixol, risperidone, and olanzapine.
Prodromal Symptoms
Symptoms preceding a crisis that may be detectable: tension or nervousness, appetite loss or disruption, sleep problems, restlessness, agitation, impaired memory, depression, sadness, preoccupation, suspiciousness, loss of interest, religious preoccupation, unwarranted feelings of worthlessness, and fear of something bad happening.
Assessment
Behavioral Responses
Deterioration of hygiene, social withdrawal, suspiciousness, hostility, ambivalence (difficulty deciding), and increased or decreased psychomotor activity.
Cognitive Responses
Decreased attention to internal stimuli (hallucinations, delusions), primary process thinking (daydreaming), and inconsistent or neologistic language.
Affective Responses
Flat or inappropriate affect, and generalized anxiety.
Mood
A prolonged emotional state influencing personality and life functioning. Affect is the outward expression of emotions (dull, flat, inappropriate, labile), and emotion is the intellectual response within the affected area of human functioning.
Depression
Symptoms
A brutal change in mood. Physical symptoms include nostalgia for the past, loss of interest, uncontrolled crying, social isolation, guilt, difficulty sleeping, and weight loss. The depressive triad includes guilt, sadness, and suicidal ideation, along with fatigue, anhedonia, and apathy.
Assessment in Depressive Disorder
Physiological responses: appetite disturbances, altered sleep patterns, constipation, fatigue, and somatic symptoms.
Cognitive responses: indecisiveness, reduced concentration, rumination, slowed thinking, and delusions.
Emotional responses: sadness, despair, guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.
Behavioral responses: poor hygiene, psychomotor retardation, decreased motivation, anhedonia, frequent complaints, and lack of spontaneity.
Caring for Manic Patients
Build trust, monitor for fatigue, malnutrition, and dehydration. Ensure rest, sleep, self-care, and proper nutrition. Administer prescribed medication. Avoid threats or negative motivation; use positive reinforcement and clear behavioral limits. Discourage extravagant dress, speak calmly, avoid contradictions, and provide a structured environment with clear, concise explanations. Be alert to potential lithium toxicity complications (thirst, diarrhea, vomiting, confusion, muscle contractions, tremors, stupor, and death).
Depression in the Elderly
Anxiety, agitation, hysterical manifestations, suicide risk, delusions, hypochondriasis, somatization, and prolonged duration are common.
Sexual Health
Human sexuality encompasses feelings of masculinity and femininity (gender identity) and the desire for contact, warmth, tenderness, and love. Sexual health is the integration of somatic, intellectual, and social aspects of sexuality. Sexual expression is influenced by cultural, ethnic, and religious views; age; health status; physical attributes; environment; and individual choice. Normal sexual intercourse involves consenting adults without force, in private, and without unintended observers. The WHO (1975) defined it as the integration of somatic, emotional, intellectual, and social aspects of sexual being in ways that are positively enriching and enhance personality, communication, and love.
Humanized sexuality values the person, love, and sexual goodness. Sexuality is a source of pleasure, health, well-being, and successful living; it fosters understanding and eliminates rigidities. It is a source of balance, harmony, and love in life.
Suggestions for Sex Education
Sex education should not be isolated from other educational experiences. It begins in early childhood. Answer children’s questions truthfully (without excessive detail). Children learn better from models and real examples than from words. School sex education extends home education. Teaching proper emotional and rational behavior is as important as teaching biological components. Teach children that manipulation and exploitation are wrong, and that loving, intimate relationships are more significant than superficial sexual encounters. Don’t underestimate the importance of discussions with children, especially about birth control.