Schizophrenia: The Impact on Families

Her loving husband, John, never takes her illness seriously. The reader has a front row seat of the narrator’s insanity voluminously growing. He has shown great patience with the recovery of his wife’s condition. However, the narrator is clear to the reader that she cannot be her true self with him. In the narrator’s eyes she feels he is completely oblivious to how she feels and could never understand her. If she did tell him that the yellow wallpaper vexed her as it does he would insist that she leave. She could not have this.

Nurses often use the aspect of time as an excuse not to conduct a family interview, however, Wright and Leahey (2009) clearly demonstrate how integrating families into patient care does not have to consume a lot of time. Using the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) and Calgary Family Intervention Model (CFIM), a family interview can be organized and conducted in a less amount of time, and end in a greater understanding of the patient and family. The CFAM contains three major categories including structural, developmental, and functional, which can be used to assess a family or help them address a specific health issue (Wright & Leahey, 2009). The CFIM uses assessments focusing on strengths, meaning that it uses the strengths of each individual family member, and the unit as a whole to provide positive interventions. This allows the interventions to focus on encouraging the family, rather than their deficits or dysfunctions (Wright and Leahey, 2009). During the 15-minute interview, it is suggested to have the entire family present so that the interviewer is able note reactions and collaborate with each family member, thus providing the most acceptable plan of care for the entire family.

It also shows that not every family has the same strengths and how the every family’s strengths can differ from each other’s. Which allows the nurse to use this tool to identify their strengths as a family to help them to set a family goal to achieve together and formulate a problem solving plan. It’s an easy tool because the questions are straightforward and it is a child friendly tool, suitable for any age not just the adults. It is a family assessment therefore the children’s feelings shall not be neglected. External family members can take part in this assessment as well, not only will it improve the family members’ relationship with each other and as a family but also help build a trusting relationship with the nurse which will allow the family members to voice out or share anything without feeling uncomfortable. (Smith LM

Using the CFAM to conduct a family interview, I identified a nursing diagnoses and interventions for the family I interviewed.

A family health assessment is a process by which a nurse evaluates and describes the health status of a given family. It is a framework that helps to identify areas of potential risk for illness, opportunities for health education and actions needed to address these (World Health Organization, 2001). Specifics covered in a nurse led family assessment will include family history, perceptions about health, reports, health records, and any clinic test results. The nurse conducts an interview, compiles data and performs an appropriate

Family health assessment is an integral part of the formula used in creating a customized plan of care for the families’ health care. Family health assessment is also a tool that can be used to identify and evaluate the family’s health concerns, their life style and also helping families make good decisions regarding their family’s health. Family’s perception towards health and health promotion could be very different and unique, which makes the Family health assessment even more challenging for the nurses and health care professionals. Nurse’s have a moral obligation towards the society to help them promote their families health. The

A comprehensive family assessment provides a foundation to promote family health, Edelman & Mandle, C. L., (2011). This assessment of family health offers many approaches that involve getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the family. According to Stanhope & Lascaster (2010), the family nursing assessment is the cornerstone for family

A comprehensive family assessment provides a foundation to promote family health (Edelman & Mandle, 2011). 1987 Marjorie Gordon purposed 11 functional health patterns to use for guidance in order to facilitate nurses to have a frame work for the family assessment in. Gordon’s 11 functional health patterns help organizes basic family assessment information. This standardized format will guide nurses to complete the family assessment using system approaches, which will identify a patient’s

John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate one family's experience of living with multiple chronic illnesses into the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) and Rolland's Chronic Health Challenge Framework. CFAM was developed by Dr. Lorraine M. Wright, a professor Emeritus of nursing and by Dr. Maureen Leahey, a manager of a mental health outpatient program both have over 25 years experience while still managing to supervise, teach, consult, write, and maintain a part-time clinical practice in individual, couple, and family therapy (Moxie, 2007). CFAM allows nurses to assess families during interviews. CFAM is a multidimensional framework consisting of three major categories: structural, dimensional and functional. (Wright & Leahey, 2005)

Assessment, the first step in the nursing process, is a concept that must grasped in order for nurses to possess the solid foundation required to develop a plan and provide optimal care to their patients. This assessment is significant not only to individual patients, but their families, who are becoming increasingly recognized for their significance to the health and well being of individual family members. Nurses use a variety of tools in family nursing, and one of the most significant includes the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM), developed by Wright and Leahey. CFAM is an integrated conceptual framework used for interviewing and making

A nursing assessment of a family is the basis of nursing interventions. Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) state, “By using a systematic process, family problem areas are identified and family strengths are emphasized as the building blocks for interventions and to facilitate family resiliency (p. 567). The following paragraphs will describe a typical family. The family consists of a mother, a father, a 10 year old daughter, and a six year old son. The family chosen was interviewed individually and as a family.

This is a 40-year-old female with a 6/18/2010 date of injury, when an agitated patient picked-up a heart monitor machine and slammed it into claimant's head and ribs.

When we meet people who don't fit the social norms we feel awkward or scared. When we meet them we won't know what to do or say because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. People with mental illness’ are difficult to understand, but that's only because we are to scared to asked how they think and how they see things. Joanne Greenberg’s “I never promised you a rose garden” allows you to see how Deborah Blau saw the world and how her brain worked with having schizophrenia. Joanne Greenberg brings you through the journey of overcoming schizophrenia, but as you go through that journey you learn a lot about how a mental illness effects everyone in the family.

Assessments of family’s health are to help focus on the control and prevention of diseases. Health assessment assist in determining an individual’s perception of their quality of life along with the family’s perception as a whole. This also helps to define a person’s level of fulfillment when looking at his or her health status. One way that we as nurses can gather information on family and their health is by using Friedman’s family assessment model. This model includes patterns such as values, perception of health, nutrition, sleep/rest, elimination, activity/exercise, cognitive and sensory perception, self-perception, role relationship, sexuality, and coping abilities. This tool helps the nurse outline, in an organized manner, of information gathered on a family’s health.