Mental Health Nursing Application Essay Sample

The opportunity to expand and refine my nursing knowledge has always equated to me attending the University of Alabama School of Nursing’s masters program. With their master’s degree programs earning the number one spot for Top 50 Best Value, the quality of the programs is undeniable. I selected to apply to the psychiatric mental health track because during my undergraduate studies, I realized this was a career worthy study. My brother was diagnosed with bipolar/schizophrenia at fifteen, and I always questioned his lack of motivation and self-care abilities. It was not until taking the Concepts of Behavioral Health Nursing, that I realized the existence of positive and negative symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, and that apathy and learning disabilities were just as much a part of my brother’s illness as hallucinations or delusions. According to Akiko (2004) “Severity of negative symptoms was significantly associated with worse performance on attention/working memory,”(p. 750). With this

My role there was to educate and provide activities to the consumers about healthy food choices, smoking cessation, sexually transmitted diseases, hygiene practices, and their various mental disorders and comorbidities. As a student, I was assigned a consumer, and was responsible for performing a weekly mental assessment and assisting him with problem solving skills. My assigned consumer was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. It quickly became apparent to me that communicating with him would be challenging. He required constant repetition and reinforcement to feel comfortable with new interventions. However, my persistence proved to have an impact on his impulses. He began to focus less on his impulsions when included in group activities led by the nursing students. He slowly opened up to encouragement and direction from