ABSTRACT

Aim: To describe nurses' experiences of health promotion in psychiatric care.

Background: To promote health is a central part of nursing and mental health increases in society. As a complement to medical interventions in mental health, it is important to raise the patient's own resources to promote health. A patient's resources can be described as social factors, personal characteristics, physical activity and other activities. Animals and nature are also considered to have a healing effect on the mental health.

Design/Method: Twelve semistructured interviews of nurses in psychiatric outpatient clinic in the north of Sweden were conducted. The interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis.

Result: The analysis resulted in three categories: ”Strive for common insight”, ”Importance of context” and ”Sense of job satisfaction”. The three categories were based on eleven subcategories: ”Value and understand the patient's resources”, ”Amplify what works and give hope”, ”Formulate common goals”, ”Confirm illness to support motivation”, ”Fill life with meaning”, ”Encourage activity”, ”Strengthening social community”, ”Interaction gives health benefits”, ”Limitations in health promotion”, ”Symptoms provides changing conditions” and ”Medicines on good and bad”.

Conclusion: The study showed that health promotion methods require a conscious focus on salutogenic factors more than on pathogenic factors, assuming everyone has inherent resources. Physical and other activities, in addition to other positive effects, gave the feeling of being part of a context.