Non-Verbal Communication Within Acute Mental Health Ward Assessment Answer

Answer :

ANALYTICAL REFLECTIVE PAPER

Non-verbal communication within acute mental health ward

1. Non-verbal communication

The non-verbal communication process consists of gestures, body languages, facial expressions, eye contact, posture, voice tone and others that are used to communicate with people without using language (Hall et al. 2019). That is why nonverbal communication processes are recognized as non-linguistic transmission processes of information. There are many aspects of non-verbal communication processes such as paralanguage, proxemics, psychological changes, silence and others. Non-verbal communication has great importance in human lives as it develops a person's capability to relate and engage in meaningful interaction in life (Hubbard & Burgoon, 2019). In this way, people can establish a good relationship and a better understanding of others.

2. A detailed description of the chosen skill

The chosen non-verbal communication skill in this paper is a therapeutic non-verbal communication process. As opined by Joung and Park (2019), In therapeutic non-verbal communication processes, the counsellor or a person has to maintain communication with other people's body language, gestures and others. This process helps the person in the procedure of therapy. That is why it is called a therapeutic non-verbal communication process. Martin and Chanda (2016) stated that therapeutic communication can be described as face to face interaction with patients or others which is designed to emphasize on the mental and physical wellbeing of the patient and in the case of non-verbal communication, it is maintained by several aspects such as eye contact, voice tone and others. Few therapeutic non-verbal communication techniques are active listening, reflecting, restating, focusing, silence and others. In the area of acute mental health ward, the therapeutic non-verbal communication process is widely used by the nurses in order to provide support and to deliver information to the patients.

3. The purpose of the chosen skill

The main purpose of therapeutic communication skill is to interact with the patients and to deal with their thoughts, feelings, concerns and their needs. It has been found that non-verbal communication skill is very effective to treat mentally ill patients (Figure et al., 2018). Therapeutic non-verbal communication skill is used to provide support to the mental well-being of the patients as nurses or counsellors can establish a good relationship with the mentally ill patients in this way without using verbal communication. Apart from that, Rønning and Bjørkly (2019) mentioned it also helps to maintain the relationship with patients from diversified culture as focusing, active listening could avoid conflicts and misunderstanding.  In an acute mental health ward, it is very difficult to deal with the patients as most of the patients there are aggressive in nature due to their mental illness. Therefore, it is impossible for the workers or the nurses of those wards to interact with the patients and to provide any information or to instruct them. That is why therapeutic non-verbal communication skill is most purposeful in the area of treating mental patients as it enables the workers of the wards to understand the thoughts and concerns of the patients and to establish relationships with them in order to treat them peacefully.

4. Aims and justification of the chosen non-verbal skill

The aim of choosing therapeutic non-verbal communication skills is to deal with the aggressive and mentally ill people of acute mental health ward in order to treat them correctly by understanding their concerns.

 The aim or the objective of this reading is made by focusing completely on the goal which is applying therapeutic non-verbal communication skills to treat the mental health of the patients. Along with that, it can be said that this goal is realistic as it can be achieved easily because this skill is designed especially emphasizing on the treatment of mental patients and maintaining rapport with them and with the ward members. 

In the area of treating mentally ill people, therapeutic nonverbal communication skill is used massively by the nurses or the counsellors of mental hospitals (Chron, 2020). The current issue of acute mental health ward revolves around a newly admitted female patient who is mentally ill and at the same time very aggressive and violent. The patient was asked by the nurse to change her clothes and to wear hospital clothes several times. When she did not provide any response to the nurse instruction, she was forced by the nurse and by other staff of the acute mental health ward to change her clothes immediately. In this case, nurses handled the patient violently and forced her to provide a response in their instruction which is not the right way to treat mentally ill patients. By the proper application of therapeutic non-verbal communication skills, this issue could be resolved easily.

Therefore, the main question is whether this skill can resolve the issue of mental patients or not. In other words, this question can be framed as how appropriate is therapeutic communication skill for treating mental illness. The main question of this paper can be divided into two sub-questions as the importance of therapeutic communication skill and the appropriateness of this skill for treating the mental health of the patients and maintaining a better workplace. 

5. Most important information that one needs to keep mind for using this skill and the reason behind it

The most important information regarding this skill is that the user of this skill needs to be possessed of patience and ability to understand the concerns and feelings of patients. As it is mentioned in the earlier section that therapeutic non-verbal communication skill has broad usage in the area of treating mentally ill patients and maintaining communication with others because generally it is difficult to interact with these kinds of patients by verbal communication due to their aggressiveness. Therefore, nurses of acute mental health ward have to understand the body language of the patient and need to make eye contact with them in order to deliver information to them.  This could induce the other nurses at the ward to manage the patients with acute mental health problems. That is why it is required to be possessed of patience in order to understand the feelings of patients is very important for this communication skill (Ncbi, 2020). Considering the current issue, it can be said in order to calm down the mental health condition of the aggressive and violent patient of the acute mental health ward, nurses have to be patient to deal with the patient properly, otherwise, the patient could be more violent and uncontrollable.  

6. Theories related to the chosen skill in order to understand the practice of this skill

There are many theories available to understand the practice of non-verbal communication skill, but among all Peplau's interpersonal relation theory is chosen in this paper to define the practice of therapeutic communication skill. Hagerty et al. (2017), stated that Peplau's interpersonal relation theory mainly focuses on the therapeutic process and the relationship between nurses and patients. As per this theory, proper communication process depends on many complex factors such as environment, attitudes, beliefs of the dominant culture. Apart from this, this theory depicts that interpersonal therapeutic interaction process has occurred between an individual person who is mentally sick and needs to be treated and nurses who are specially trained and educated to treat them methodically in order to help them to recover from their illness (Deane & Fain, 2016). From this theory, the practice of therapeutic non-verbal communication skill is clearly understood as this theory vividly depicts that to treat the mentally ill people nurses have to maintain an interpersonal process.

7. A detailed discussion about therapeutic nonverbal communication skill in the context of elements of thought or reasoning framework

Therapeutic nonverbal communication skill enables a worker of an acute mental health ward to understand the patient's concerns and to establish a relationship with them in order to help them in their recovery. On the other side, 'Elements of thought or reasoning' is a framework by Paul and Elder which reveals that all reasoning is a practice to figure out something in order to establish a question or to resolve any problem (Forawi, 2016). As per this framework, all reasoning or thoughts are based on any particular assumptions, information or advice and all of them are done from any particular point of view. That is why using the elements of thoughts framework, it can be said that the therapeutic non-verbal communication skill is chosen also for addressing the issue of treating aggressive and violent mental patients in acute mental health ward. Like elements of thoughts, in my workplace, there is also an issue or problem which can be resolved by applying this skill properly.

8. The main issue or problem as the skill is designed on the basis of this issue

The issue is to deal with the aggressive and violent patients of acute mental health ward properly and marinating a good rapport with nurses In the earlier section, it has been mentioned that the issue revolves around a newly admitted female patient of acute mental health ward. The patient is too aggressive due to her mental illness. That is why she did not respond properly in the instruction of the nurse of the mental health ward. She did not want to change her clothes and to wear hospital clothes. For this reason, nurses have to deal with her rudely in order to change her clothes. However, this issue can be solved easily by using therapeutic nonverbal communication skills. As in this way, the nurses can interact with the patient by making eye contact with her or by her gesture, so it will be possible to communicate with the patient but not by verbal communication. In order to resolve this issue of the patient of the mental health ward, this skill is designed as it is appropriate to deal with mental patients (Registerednursing, 2020). 

9. Few assumptions behind therapeutic non-verbal communication skills which are taken for granted about this skill

The main assumption behind this skill is it has the power to resolve the issues of the patients of acute mental health ward. This is not appropriate as it is not possible to resolve all the issues of the mentally ill patients by using only this skill. The patients of that ward are extremely aggressive and violent, that is why they are admitted to the acute mental health ward. In this case, therapeutic non-verbal communication skills of the workers can enable them to understand the concerns of the patients. The nurses or the workers of the ward cannot treat the mental illness of the patients completely with this skill, but there is a requirement of a few more psychological therapies. Apart from this, this is also an assumption of this skill that it takes a very less time to treat the patient which is not true. This skill requires patience of the users, otherwise, it will be not possible to understand the feelings of the mental patients properly. Thus, the major assumptions behind this skill can be summarized as:

• It can resolve all the issues in the acute mental health ward mostly with improper communication
• It takes very less time in order to help the patient to recover from their mental illness.

10. Identifying what the author is taking for granted that might be questioned

The author has also thought that using the techniques of therapeutic non-verbal communication skills for the mental health of the aggressive female patient of the acute mental health ward can be recovered easily. Apart from this, the author has an assumption that the application of this skill requires very less time which is absolutely wrong. The mental health of the newly admitted female patient was extremely bad, that is why she is uncontrollable. Therefore, there is a need for a lot of time to treat her properly. The author has thought that the aggressiveness of the patient can be treated easily by using this skill, but considering the mental condition of the patient, it is found that patience is needed highly to treat this kind of patient. Along with that, mental illness requires a lot of time to be recovered. Therefore, this assumption of the author is also wrong that using the therapeutic non-verbal skill will be helpful for the patients to recover their mental health in less time. 

11. Consequences of following the author's line of reasoning seriously

If people take the author's assumption regarding the technique of eye contact or therapeutic non-verbal communication skill seriously, then, it will be not possible to treat the mental patient properly. As treatment of the mentally ill people needs a lot of time, therefore users of this skill need to be possessed of patience. Otherwise, the person may not be able to treat the patient properly by not getting a satisfying result. Along with that, it is not possible to treat every mental illness of the patients of acute mental health ward by using only eye contact therapy or therapeutic non-verbal communication skill. Eye contact is just a medium of therapeutic non-verbal communication skill to deal with the patient and to deliver information by not using verbal communication skill. In the case of the female patient of the acute mental health ward, this technique can be used only to calm down the sudden mental condition of the patient rather than treating her mental illness completely.

12. Evaluation of the skill and the process of teaching the skill to the workers of acute mental health ward

In order to teach about the different techniques of therapeutic non-verbal communication skill to the workers or the nurses of acute mental health ward, few steps can be taken. At first, it is needed to evaluate this skill in front of the workers to tell them about their strengths and weaknesses. As nonverbal communication skill is very useful to deal with the peoples and the patients by using several techniques like eye contact, voice tone, gesture and others (The Balance Careers, 2020). On the other side, this skill requires patience from its users, otherwise, it will not be possible to treat the patients properly. 

In order to teach the workers of acute mental health ward regarding this skill, first, it is needed to make a proper plan, therefore, the process can be generated systematically. After that, it is needed to arrange training for the workers who have the willingness to achieve this skill. Along with that, seminars will be helpful in this case as in this way workers can interact with the experts and can develop their skill accordingly. There is a need for the arrangement of dealing with this kind of patient practically, therefore workers can evaluate their skill.

13. Following steps to continue improving the skill in the workplace of the acute mental health ward in the future

Continuous improvement of the skills of the employees is very important for developing the service of the business (Lundkvist&Gustavsson, 2018). In order to sustain the continuous improvement of this skill of the workers of the acute mental health ward, authorities need to measure the accuracy level of the workers regarding this skill for better professional communication.  For this purpose, authorities need to provide the opportunity to the workers to deal with the patients who are possessed of extreme aggressiveness. If the workers can handle them properly, then, there is no need for improvement of this skill. If they can not handle them properly, then, there is a need for training for them to improve their skills like making eye contact with the patients, understanding their body language, delivering information to them by gesture and others. Besides this, authorities of acute mental health ward are required to arrange several training, seminar, campaign and development programmes regarding therapeutic non-verbal communication skills on a regular basis. It has been observed that training and development programmes are very useful for the skill development of the employees (Corporate finance institute, 2020). There are many techniques of therapeutic non-verbal communication skill such as body language, gesture, voice tone and so on. For ultimate future development, authorities of the acute mental health need to emphasize these techniques also.

14. Conclusion

The overall discussion of this paper is based on the non-verbal communication process. For this paper, the chosen skill is therapeutic non-verbal communication skill which is used mainly for the mentally ill people. In order to resolve the issue of the mental patient of acute mental health ward, the author has suggested eye contact technique because the patients of this world are extremely violent, therefore it is worthless to use verbal communication. From the discussion, it has been found that using this technique of non-verbal communication skill the patients cannot be fully recovered, but it is very useful to calm down the sudden aggressiveness of the patients.