Closing the Gap: Mental health concerns are common among college students and may be especially prevalent among nursing students due to demanding, rigorous academic education. Nursing students tend to experience anxiety and depression. Despite the mental health challenges many nursing students face, they tend to not seek psychiatric help. Recognizing factors that influence help-seeking behaviors is crucial for developing interventions that support student’s physical, mental, and academic success.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: Taking care of nursing students leads to more nurses in the healthcare field. Nursing staff is essential to a healthy healthcare ecosystem.
Optimizing Resources: The survey tested in this study, the Mental Health Help-Seeking Scale (MHHSS), was found to be a reliable tool to measure nursing students’ intentions to seek professional mental health services. This survey is low cost and understandable to a lay audience.
Closing the Gap: This pilot study identifies mindfulness-based techniques as an effective tool for providers to implement with individuals with psychiatric challenges engaged in tobacco treatment
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: This study supports patients by training Behavioral Health Care Providers in mindfulness techniques that can help patients stop tobacco use.
Optimizing Resources: This pilot study utilizes a 1-hour training to educate and empower Behavioral Health Care Providers in mindfulness techniques for use with patients.
Closing the Gap: This study identifies telehealth usage disparities by geography, demographics, and insurance structure to pinpoint areas of growth for telehealth accessibility.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: This study indirectly supports patients by identifying barriers to accessing care. If available, use of telehealth increases access to mental healthcare services, continuity of care, and convenience (decreased time and transportation barriers). Over time, better access leads to consistent treatment and improved mental health outcomes. This study identified that patients with more severe mental illness are more likely to use telehealth; suggesting telehealth supports those with greater care needs.
Optimizing Resources: This study identifies both where telehealth is underused and where it is most effective. This improves efficiency by identifying populations to direct resources.
Closing the Gap: In 2013, the American Academy of Nursing called for increased nursing advocacy in tobacco control. Years later, tobacco continues to drive health disparities. This literature review aims to provide an updated picture of tobacco dependence and recommend further action for nurses to deliver tobacco dependence treatment.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: Tobacco dependence continues to cause health disparities, particularly in marginalized groups. This literature review found that nurse-led tobacco dependence treatment interventions often led to cessation.
Optimizing Resources: This low-cost study found that training and utilizing nursing staff to deliver tobacco treatment is an effective way to increase patient cessation.
Closing the Gap: Individuals with serious mental illness such as schizophrenia spectrum disorder often have high mortality rates that can be associated with poor medication adherence. This study examined whether the use of long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotics may improve medication adherence and reduce hospitalizations.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: Previous studies indicate that patients treated with LAIs have significantly lower readmission rates and improved recovery outcomes than those prescribed oral antipsychotics.
Optimizing Resources: This low-cost study examined patient records to compare rehospitalization rates among patients discharged with an LAI versus oral antipsychotics.
Closing the Gap: Health care workers may experience traumatic events in the workplace. This study sought to discover if health care workers use tobacco and alcohol after traumatic experiences.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: A first step in providing health care workers with needed support is identifying their coping mechanisms for trauma. Seeking positive outlets for trauma will lead to increased personal health and greater ability of health care workers to effectively deliver care to patients.
Optimizing Resources: Our low-cost survey showed that there is a relationship between trauma and risky tobacco and alcohol use among health care workers. It is important to be aware of these relationships and to identify those most at risk and provide support when a health care worker experiences a traumatic event.
Closing the Gap: Individuals living with mental illness use tobacco at disproportionately high rates compared with individuals without mental illness. This contributes to significant health disparities. This study explored the factors influencing Mental Health Professional’ intentions and delivery of tobacco treatment for patients living with mental illness in an inpatient psychiatric setting.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: Increasing Mental Health Professionals’ frequency of tobacco treatment delivery can promote positive patient outcomes.
Optimizing Resources: This study utilized a low-cost survey. The findings of this study are intended to increase MHP utilization and implementation of tobacco treatment interventions among psychiatric patients who use tobacco. Lowering tobacco use among patients would decrease patient expenses such as medical costs and the cost of nicotine products.
Closing the Gap: Arabs living in the United States may face stressors and difficulties that may affect their mental health. However, research has shown that they are less likely to seek professional mental health treatment. One way to bridge the gap is to understand and identify the barriers to seeking help.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: The purpose of this systematic review was to pinpoint factors that impact Arab attitudes toward mental health care and their willingness to seek it. The results of the systematic review were lifted onto the socio-ecological model to show the layered factors associated with attitudes towards mental health care and intentions to seek mental health care. Psychiatric-mental health nurses may use these factors to develop strategies to increase and promote Arab utilization of mental health services. An increase in mental health care utilization may help alleviate the mental health challenges faced by Arab communities.
Optimizing Resources: Pinpointing factors that impact Arab attitudes toward mental health care can help inform new approaches to engage Arab communities in mental health care. Addressing these factors could increase the likelihood that Arabs will seek mental health care which may improve health outcomes.
Closing the Gap: The prevalence of tobacco use among individuals with Serious Mental Illness (SMI) is nearly twice that of the general population. Individuals with SMI die several years earlier, on average, compared to individuals without mental illness, and smoking is a major contributing factor. There is often a lack of tobacco treatment provision and utilization in mental and behavioral health settings. This is particularly evident within Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) programs that provide services for people living with SMI.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes:
ACT providers felt capable of providing treatment and showed strong intentions to deliver tobacco treatment. However, providers felt a lack of social or professional support for providing treatment. The ACT consumers report positive attitudes and intentions towards engaging in tobacco treatment but are not necessarily planning to do so. Consumers were infrequently advised to stop tobacco use. Additionally, consumers are exposed to hazardous levels of secondhand smoke.
Optimizing Resources:
Promoting tobacco-free policies and tobacco treatment within ACT programs increases the likelihood that patients will stop tobacco use. This decreases financial burden and increases health outcomes for patients.
Closing the Gap: The implementation of an afternoon snack was shown to decrease staff reliance on seclusion and restraints in a psychiatric inpatient setting. By providing patients with structured and supportive intervention, the hospital was able to manage challenging behaviors more effectively while improving safety for both patients and staff.
Promoting Positive Patient Outcomes: This intervention not only decreased seclusion and restraint use but also improved patient satisfaction. The snack program offered a small but meaningful way to engage patients, help them manage hunger-related stress, and established a calmer environment that promoted better overall health outcomes for patients.
Optimizing Resources: The snack program is a cost-effective intervention that requires minimal resources but delivers many benefits. By reducing the need for seclusion and restraints, the hospital was able to improve both patient care and staff safety, optimizing the use of resources while enhancing the therapeutic environment.
