Standards of Psychiatric Nursing:
By 1956, the Masters programme was extended to two academic years. Some nurses established private practices with psychiatric patients. It aroused the public's need for protection.
In 1972, American Nursing Association published Standards of Psychiatric Nursing practice (revised again in 1982), and from 1973 began to certify psychiatric nurses. National Institute of Mental Health gave integration grants to every school to integrate psychiatric/mental health and behavioural concept in all clinical nursing qurricula. A psychiatric nurse faculty member was employed in each school to work directly with non-psychiatric nurse teachers for this purpose. More theory and clinical exposures to learn psychiatric nursing was recommended. These graduate nurses worked in private psychiatric institutions, community mental health centres, academic institutions andlor in private practice.
The organizational patterns of mental hospitals have also changed. Therapeutic community concepts emphasized that patients were the workers, attendants and nurses, the patient-custodial managers, in which physicians prescribed treatment and the rulers of conduct. In the 1970s, deinstitutionalisation was encouraged. Family therapy became popular.
In 1980s, decentralization, a change in the organization, eroded the identify of separate professions. Various treatment modalities came into existence in psychiatric care. In the medical model, the psychiatrists view mental illness as deviations from a biomedical norm. Psychiatric nurses brought out the nursing model, wherein their approach is holistic, giving importance to biological, psychological and social needs of the patients.
In 1990s, community participation in rehabilitating the mentally ill achieved major concern. To assist psychiatric patients to be at least minimally self-sufficient in terms of social living in the community, innovative community programmes, pre- discharge cottage living programmes and half-way homes were established.