Managing Challenging Behaviour in Mental Heath Essay

Managing Challenging Behaviour in Mental Heath - Essay Example The primary information from this program would be supported by previous works by various scholars borrowed from books on mental health nursing and journals on mental health, mental health nursing and intellectual disability. Rationale There are various behaviours that people consider as challenging. Examples among those with learning disabilities include self injury, violence, ambivalence, sexual disinhibition, non-compliance and substance abuse (Callaghan & Waldock 2012). Considering adults with learning disability, Neno, Aveyard and Heath identified repetitive actions, screaming, shouting, running away and resisting care as some common challenging behaviour (2007). According to NHS (2012), challenging behaviour would be mostly observed among people who have conditions affecting the brain and communication like dementia and learning disability. Since communication defines human interaction with one another, its breakdown becomes a problem, leading to frustration which yields challe nging behaviour. If it leads to an outcome desired by the victim, then it could be repeated over and over again. The challenges experienced with these behaviours could be as a result of the support given or denied and problems resulting from inability to understand the things happening in the environment and how to communicate what such persons want. Having seen people with challenging behaviours in almost all the areas I have been working from as nursing student, I feel that learning how to manage such behaviours would be of paramount importance in my future profession as a mental health nurse. 1. Undertake and critically evaluate your transition activity Among the key areas of challenging behaviours that I undertook to train on included an evaluation of some of the common challenging behaviours, risk assessment, risk reduction and incidence prevention and treatment for those exhibiting such behaviours including forceful restraint. In as much as there was some focus on the role of the community, much emphasis was laid on my role as a mental health nurse in managing such situations. Understanding these facts from my perspective as a mental health nurse would be critical in my future role when handling people with learning disabilities. As noted by Emerson and Hatton (2008), these are the people who are likely to exhibit such behaviours. Much of the observed phenomena were from my experience having interacted with people with challenging behaviour in most of my undertakings. However, in this transition program, the observed phenomena were qualified with credible citation of supportive theories and findings from various scholars. I adopted the proposition by Ritter and Lampkin (2012) who categorised the triggers of challenging behaviours into primary, secondary and consequent. According to these scholars, primary causes are a result of the service user’s mental illness such as aggression when such a person hears voices. Secondary triggers result from symp toms of an illness which results in the service user responding negatively against other persons. Finally, consequential triggers would be caused by mental illness which leads to seeking for attention. However, it has always been difficult for me to identify a single cause of challenging behaviours in a person. Perhaps, the argument by the Xeniditis, Russel and Murphy (2012) that there would not be a unitary common cause associated with these behaviours. Having understood the causes of these behaviours, the transition program