Patricia B. Nemec

Walking on the Sunny Side: What Positive Psychology Can Contribute to Psychiatric Rehabilitation Concepts and Practice

TOPIC This article suggests a positive psychology framework to strengthen and broaden psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery thought and practice. PURPOSE We inform about positive psychology concepts and measures that can be used to further knowledge, enhance practice, and guide research. SOURCES USED Foundational concepts are drawn from the published literature. Specific positive psychology concepts and measures are highlighted: complete mental health, well being, flourishing, positive emotions, flow, self-determination, posttraumatic growth, and resilience. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Employing a positive psychology framework can advance research on recovery phenomena and be used to assess rehabilitation outcomes. In addition we advocate positive psychology interventions in education and training of service providers that will enhance a positive focus and the culture of recovery.

Promoting staff wellness.

training,” promoting staff wellness is an important component in hiring, supervising, and evaluating psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners. Certainly, a “well” staff member is likely to have reduced absenteeism, but also is likely to be a more efficient worker and a more effective learner. Given the emphasis on wellness in psychiatric rehabilitation today, spurred on by the fact that people with a major mental illness have dramatically shortened life spans, a “well” workforce also provides a model of health for people using services and will be informed about wellness strategies from personal experience.

The Force of Habit: Creating and Sustaining a Wellness Lifestyle.

Regardless of an individuals mental health status, habits are difficult to establish and/or eliminate. Given the importance of good habits to overall health and wellness, nurses and other mental health service providers need to understand the force of habits (positive and negative), factors that make habit change difficult, and approaches that are likely to facilitate building and maintaining good habits. The current article provides a cursory overview of several factors (i.e., motivation, will-power, and rewards) that impact habit formation. Relevant theories and research are presented. Habit formation can be fostered through a careful analysis of current behaviors, specific and measurable short-term goals or objectives, and a detailed action plan.

Perceptions of Overall Health and Recency of Screenings

People who are served by the public mental health system often live with chronic medical conditions, exhibit many risk factors for metabolic syndrome, and experience high rates of early mortality. This research project assessed the recency of screenings and perceptions of overall health of 148 people served by the public mental health system and attending peer-run, self-help centers in New Jersey. The results underscore existing health risks and the need to assess, educate, and empower people served by the public mental health systems to regularly access screenings and self-monitor health measures, including weight and blood pressure.

To PPT or not to PPT? That is the question!

PowerPoint (PPT) offers many advantages over the older technologies and has the potential to offer advantages over using no technology at all. I will go over several misuses of PPT, with each followed by suggestions for using the technology more effectively. The column ends with some resource recommendations. Each training session or training series needs to be carefully constructed. This type of organization will help you present your material in a way that facilitates the learners ability to organize the new knowledge and build a mental representation of your instruction.

Strategies to Promote Walking Among Community-Dwelling Individuals with Major Mental Disorders

Individuals with major mental disorders could benefit from low cost, functional ways to support healthy lifestyles. Walking is a popular, preferred, accessible, and safe physical activity for many people. Walking is free, requiring no specialized equipment or membership fee, and is important to support engagement in other daily living activities. The current study explores the benefits of walking and strategies for promoting walking among community-dwelling individuals with major mental disorders. Key issues include strengthening engagement, tracking progress, and sustaining participation to achieve goals related to walking. The authors propose ways that nurses can support increased walking behavior for improved health and well-being in this population. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 56(3), 25-32.].

Supporting the Health and Wellness of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities.

Purpose: Psychiatric rehabilitation is recognized as a field with specialized knowledge and skills required for practice. The certified psychiatric rehabilitation practitioner (CPRP) credential, an exam-based certification process, is based on a regularly updated job task analysis that, in its most recent iteration, identified the new core competency domain of “supporting health and wellness.” This article explains the relevance of this domain to the current practice of psychiatric rehabilitation. Methods: We present a multidimensional foundation model of wellness that describes the job tasks highlighted in the newest CPRP competency domain and examines implications for rehabilitation educators and practitioners who do not hold the CPRP credential but still provide rehabilitation services to individuals with psychiatric disabilities. Results: The health and wellness competencies identified for CPRPs may not translate directly into competencies needed by service providers in other roles; however, practices that involve experiencing personal goal setting and action plan implementation, especially around wellness goals, can be included across service domains. Conclusion: Attending to the health and wellness of people with psychiatric disabilities is imperative. Rehabilitation practitioners who embrace the multidimensional foundation model of wellness can effectively provide services that are holistic and promote recovery and achievement of rehabilitation goals.

Developing an integrated workforce development plan.

demic and, now, as a consultant and trainer in psychiatric rehabilitation, I get a lot of questions about how to change the “culture” of a program or agency. Service providers and program leaders with a deep understanding of psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery recognize the need for a certain philosophical and ethical perspective on the day-to-day work of the agency—a perspective that may be at odds with the business-as-usual view of publiclyfunded mental health service systems. Systems transformation is a massive undertaking, regardless of the size of the system. It often requires remodeling every aspect of service delivery, from documentation to casual communication among colleagues to assessment and intervention procedures.

Fostering transitions to valued roles for youth: a training program.

In 2008 and 2009, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) funded MassPRA, the Massachusetts Chapter of the US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (USPRA) to deliver a training course, titled “Psychiatric Rehabilitation: Fostering Transitions to Valued Roles for Youth.” Designed to provide knowledge and skills to practitioners currently providing DMH-funded services for transition age youth, the curriculum for the training applied a recovery-oriented and strengths-based philosophy to help young people with emotional and behavioral difficulties make a successful transition to independence in their preferred living, learning, working, and social roles.

The self-directed learner.

Online click-through PowerPoint® presentations are fast replacing lecture-based face-to-face training in agencies’ hopes to save time and money with web-based instruction. Neither approach is likely to have much effect in developing worker competencies. That said, this shift in the field does highlight the increasing need for self-paced instruction in order to be cost-effective in preparing the psychiatric rehabilitation workforce. Selfpaced instruction gives the learner control over when and where to learn, and avoids the need for coordinating schedules and replacing on-site staff to allow them to attend a classroombased training session. Effective selfpaced training programs require high quality instructional design and, regardless of the content and technology associated with the training, require a self-directed learner.