Roles of Nurses in Promoting Self-care of Schizophrenia Patients for Recurrent Prevention

Abstract

The recurrence of schizophrenia is more likely to occur, because the disease causes      abnormal brain structure and chemical abnormalities resulting in negative psychotic symptoms, leading to a self-care disability. The main consequence is a chance of recovery from treatment will gradually decrease with the number of recurrences. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen the patient’s self-care capacities to prevent recurrence. This is a job within the nurse's responsibility that requires knowledge of strengthening a patient’s self-care capacities to prevent recurrence. This article provides nurses with knowledge on self-care in schizophrenic patients. Synthetic knowledge was obtained by conducting  content analysis of information obtained from the related concept, theory and research reviews and the case study.

Necessary knowledges for promoting self-care of schizophrenic patients to prevent recurrence include 1) self-care of schizophrenic patients in five areas: (1) personal hygiene (2) drug intake (3) people interaction (4) work performance and (5) relaxing activities. It was found that the causes of all five     aspects of the patients’ self-care defects were caused by their disorders of thinking and perception    processes. Therefore, it is necessary to help the patients to adjust their processes of thinking and      perception so that they can return to care for themselves.  2) The factors that cause recurrence consist of four main factors: (1) physical factor (2) psychological factor (3) family factor and (4) drug abuse     factor.  It was found that the physical factor is an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain, the    psychological factor is an ineffective coping and a reduced sense of self-esteem, the family factor is  getting poor family care, and the drug abuse factor is a patient’s drug abuse behavior. The four factors that cause recurrence of the patients are different for each individual. Therefore, it is necessary to     analyze which patients and what factors are the cause of the recurrence so that they can be completely resolved for each patient. 3) The role of nurses in promoting self-care of schizophrenic patients to     prevent recurrence consists of 6 areas: (1) actual awareness of illness (2) medication adherence to  treatment plan (3) drug abuse (4) occupation (5) stress management and coping and (6) social life. Each area has a supportive activity set to serve as a guideline, where each activity must be defined in       accordance with each patient. The case study revealed that performing role activities can encourage patients to take care of themselves, leading to non-recurrence.