The Biopsychosocial Perspective in Psychiatric Nursing: Myth or Future Reality?

Abstract

As psychiatric nurses enter the new century, we can reflect on some important achievements, including establishment of an advanced-practice-nursing role within mental health services and development of a broad range of skills that enhance our contributions to the care of severely mentally ill adults. Changes in psychiatric nursing practice are informed by the dramatic advances that have occurred in psychiatric treatment over the past decades. In the realm of psychopharmacology, "third generation" medications offer a range of safer and more tolerable alternatives for care than older agents. In the psychosocial arena, clinical research has identified conditions that increase vulnerability to acute psychotic illness as well as protective factors that prevent or delay relapse and promote coping and social function. These new understandings have provided the impetus for innovative programs (such as family psycho-education or intensive case management) demonstrated to be efficacious under the strict conditions of clinical trials (Lehman, Steinwachs, et al., 1998). Without trivializing the continuing impact of