Mental Health the Client, a Sixty-Year-Old Male

Mental Health

The client, a sixty-year-old male of average height but thinly built, demonstrated initial reluctance to meet with the therapist. However, within a few minutes of initiating the therapeutic conversation, the client smiled and seemed temporarily disarmed. I spoke to him with kindness but without condescension. The following encapsulates the therapeutic conversation that took place at the Veteran's Hospital at which the client had been receiving treatment for schizoaffective disorder, concurrent with alcohol dependency. I opened the conversation by introducing myself as a nursing intern.

'Mr. X, how are you? I understand you have been feeling depressed lately and I would like to be able to help you with that."

In accordance with some of the new modalities in therapeutic conversations, I enlisted input from the client. For example, I asked him what he felt was wrong with the therapy he had been receiving thus far. The client told me that he had felt the psychiatric team had largely made decisions without consulting him first; that the counselors he had been seeing were not to his liking; and that his medications had made him feel disaffected. I asked the client how he felt his stay at the Veteran's hospital might be made more comfortable, and he simply shook his head sadly and said, "I don't think there is anything you could do to possibly make this place enjoyable." I asked the client to be specific, to tell me exactly what made the hospital so unappealing, and he informed me that the atmosphere was cold, sterile, and that he felt the nursing team in general did not care about his well-being. Rather, he felt a lack of personal attention on the part of the psychiatric team and the nursing team at the veteran's hospital.