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Health Issue : Major Depression

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Health issue: Major depression
• Patient states she is sad and preoccupied with her thoughts most days.
• Experiences lack of appetite, states that she is “disgusted by the sight of food”.
• Patient suffers from insomnia. She goes to sleep around midnight and wakes up numerous times during the night. She can only fall asleep by taking Ativan.
• Spends most of her days sleeping. She complains of fatigue and muscle aches.
• Patient tends to skip her classes because she lacks motivation and concentration.
• Patient has recurrent thoughts of suicide and a history of suicide attempts.
• Engages in self-mutilation to express her anger and frustration.
• Facial expression conveys sadness and hopelessness. There is a lack of eye contact and patient’s speech is slow with a low tone.
• Patient answers questions using very short responses and answers are delayed.
Nursing Hypotheses
• Risk for suicide related to depression, hopelessness, and poor coping skills as evidenced by previous suicide attempts, suicidal ideations with no plan, and feelings of hopelessness.
The risk for suicide is the biggest concern for this patient because she lacks adaptive coping skills, displays poor problem solving, and her judgment seems to be impaired. For instance, the patient admits that her self-mutilations and suicide attempts were always impulsive decisions. Her actions were never planned or thought through, which makes this patient at high risk for suicide. Also, the patient meets many of the risk

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