nursingforsocialjustice

This is the challenge that those working in mental health work with, particularly those who work with people living with moderate to severe symptoms. For those people who are experiencing very severe symptoms, that put themselves and others at risk of harm but who do not recognize that they are experiencing symptoms or functioning any differently than they ever have, the health care providers sometimes needs to intervene. Lack of illness awareness has been seen in people that have experienced neurological illness, like stroke, and also, in those living with schizophrenia (Gerretsen et al, 2013). It can feel ethically wrong to force treatment on someone, but sometimes those individuals living with schizophrenia do not have awareness that they are not okay and so, treatment if forced in the hope that once the symptoms are treated and subside that they will have awareness, understanding and have personal investment in maintaining the symptom reduction such that they will adhere to pharmacological treatments and also maintain relationships with their health care providers and trust when they are assessed to be becoming more symptomatic again and may require more intervention.

References

Gerretsen, P., Chakravarty, M. M., Mamo, D., Menon, M., Pollock, B. G., Rajji, T. K., & Graff‐Guerrero, A. (2013). Frontotemporoparietal asymmetry and lack of illness awareness in schizophrenia. Human brain mapping, 34(5), 1035-1043.

Gerretsen, P., Menon, M., Chakravarty, M. M., Lerch, J. P., Mamo, D. C., Remington, G., … & Graff‐Guerrero, A. (2015). Illness denial in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Human brain mapping, 36(1), 213-225.