Nurture clinic: Promoting mental health of children and adolescents

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Nurses play an important role in multidisciplinary teams while treating children and adolescents with mental health issues. Nurses should recognize and capitalize on the client’s and family’s strengths as they develop interventions, provide education, and refer to resources as appropriate. Materials and Methods: It is a mixed-method research, with an initial qualitative phase of obtaining data by in-depth interviews of parents on caring for children and adolescents with mental illness followed by quantitative assessment of the level of care dependency and implementation of need-based nursing interventions to the children and adolescents with mental illness. Results: A total of 235 boys and 123 girls received the interventions. The majority of them (51.4%) were boys aged between 6 and 12 years and the highest diagnosis was attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (34%). The need-based interventions required were nutrition (90%), prevention of injury and infection (83%), and positive and productive engagement (80%). Other interventions included self-care, physical activity, and medication. Conclusion: Need-based nursing interventions help in promoting the mental health of children and adolescents. This approach may be extended to primary care facilities and community mental healthcare by nurses.