My Developing Role as a Mental Health Nurse with my Schizophrenic Essay

My Developing Role as a Mental Health Nurse with my Schizophrenic Patient - Essay Example My client, Greg, had all of these in varying degrees at different times. According to Javitt & Coyle (2004), "Scientists have long viewed schizophrenia as arising out of a disturbance in which brain cells communicate using a signalling chemical, or neurotransmitter, called dopamine" Schizophrenia is fundamentally a physical disease of the brain like Alzheimer's. With schizophrenia, people experience a slow continuing deterioration as they get older, like Alzheimer's, but it is more commonly thought of as a neuro-developmental illness, present at birth, affecting neurological development, and becoming manifest in late adolescence (Javitt & Coyle, 2004). For many individuals, schizophrenia is a severe and enduring illness. While nurses need to understand the symptoms of the illness in order to provide specific care and treatment, it also is important to find out how people with schizophrenia embody the illness. Capturing this knowledge will help nurses to provide more appropriate care to these individuals. Assessment. Greg is the son of a wealthy businessman well-known in the community. He has two sisters but many half-brothers and half-sisters. The problem of Greg is that he is not on the legitimate side of the family. His mother happened to be the former housemaid of the Don. When Greg was young, he had heard all the stories about his father, but everything is hazy now. He had tasted of the good life that some fortune was able to bring just after the Don died. He now has no father but just his mother and two sisters who briefly had enjoyed all the money could bring. Still, their mother would take some trips to the wealthy side of the family and ask for help, but there is a time giving had to stop. While the first family was kind to them, the differences in not being legitimate made early marks in the mind of Greg and his sisters. But it was Greg who tried to work hard to be acceptable as the Don's son. Skinny and sickly as he was, he did everything worthy to be counted. He learned music, did much reading, engaged in philanthropic pursuits, and did some advanced schooling. Greg had worked his way to college and was able to have his name engraved in the school's board for having topped the national teacher's board exam for the year. One of his sisters found her own way through life by holding on to odd jobs, just as the mother did. The other sister became stricken with chronic lapses of schizophrenia much earlier than Greg, and clearly refused to make her own way through life. To her, she is the Don's daughter who needed never to work very hard. After taking his bachelor's degree, Greg had enrolled in a masters' program, then finally to a doctorate degree. There was no stopping with his climbing socially to improve himself. However, he was not able to finish this last degree. It was when he could not anymore stay sane with all the responsibilities. He was stricken hard with schizophrenia - one that came and went but never away. It seemed that he had it all the time, while trying to go to school. Meanwhile, her schizophrenic sister had died. Nursing Diagnosis. One critical fact of schizophrenia to realize is that it interferes with self