Depression is a problem that’s becoming more and more involved in our society. It’s generally subscribed as a chemical imbalance that causes sadness for the victim.
Before you read any further, you may want to download these free nursing care plan for depression templates to help out your process.
There are many things that can cause it, but you have to manage the depression.
There are going to be times you can’t be bothered to do anything because you are depressed.
Often times the depression will go away if enough time passes.
One thing you can do is try making better life choices so that you don’t feel as depressed. If you’re someone who’s promiscuous, try establishing relationships that have a lot more emotional connection.
You should try these things first before you try to rely on drugs for any sort of additional assistance.
If you are a nurse, try talking about some of these things with your patient.
Unlike other things you would want to work on, this is going to take a long time to repair and some people will never fully recover.
Every hospital is going to change its plan depending on its patient and how severe the depression is.
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Nursing care plan for depression in elderly
When it comes to depression, a nurse has to look at a diagnosis.
The diagnosis is going to show the likely cause of the depression as well as what the consequences are if they don’t take care of the depression.
This is very important because the care plan can vary wildly depending on how severe the depression is.
You also need to think about how long that particular individual has been dealing with depression.
The longer they have been dealing with it, the more sensitive you need to be when it comes to decision-making.
Our society is becoming more depressed every day.
See also: Can You Be a Nurse With Depression and Anxiety?
Sometimes, people are depressed becomes they don’t know how to properly grieve.
Other times, people are depressed because they lose their job, or school is too stressful and the expectations are way too high.
We know many of the root causes but not many people can agree on the proper solutions to these kinds of problems.
It’s not something that has a straight-forward solution to dealing with this.
You have to constantly get the opinion of your patient and make sure they are feeling better about what you are doing to them.
How to write a nursing care plan for depression?
There are a lot of things you have to think about before you write a nursing care plan.
There is no flowchart that will always give you the exact specifications as to what you want.
You have to really learn about your patient before you give them medical advice. You also have to consider their relationship with other drugs before you try to prescribe anything.
It is your responsibility to make sure they don’t get addicted and end up becoming a worse person when they end up leaving the hospital.
Writing one of these plans shouldn’t even be the first, 2nd or 3rd thing you think about if you truly want to help the patient.
See also: Nursing Care Plan – Full Guide
One of the things a nurse needs to look out for is the expected outcomes for a plan.
These outcomes are going allow a lot of the staff to deal with problems as they come up if the patient has been honest.
See also: How Can Nurses Improve Patient Outcomes?
Drugs can do a lot of bad things to a patient if they end up taking the wrong prescription or doing things that are ill-advised.
In some extreme cases, there can be violent mood swings or socially-unacceptable behavior.
As a medical professional, you are obligated to be as educated as possible before making a decision.
Example of the nursing care plan for depression
For the cause of depression, many people could start out with grieve.
Many people are going to have to deal with losing someone that they care about and there’s nothing they can do to replicate that.
A nurse nor any other medical professional can’t control how much the patient loved that individual, so the best thing they can do is redirect that emotion in some other sort of way.
The treatment needs to be something that actively makes the patient happy while being something they can do every day.
Next is prescribing some sort of treatment that is going to fix the problem or at least reduce the problem.
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Sometimes it could be setting them up with a psychiatrist or therapist that helps them with the root of their problem.
Other times, the medical professional can realize how temporary the problem is.
There also has to be an evaluation process of how the patient currently feels and where the situation might be beheaded.
Sometimes it could just mean there are mood swings, other times it can be more serious like suicide.
Make sure that you constantly talk with the patient as to how they feel.
Conclusion: Depression Nursing Care Plan
Depression is an incredibly complex issue that we don’t know enough about.
For many people who are young, their depression will go away soon enough and they can work to better themselves in other aspects of their life.
This is something that we can fix but it takes a lot more time and effort than most people are willing to give.
Unlike other medical problems, depression isn’t something that you can just solve by giving people some prescriptions or allowing surgeries for operations.
See also: Can Nurse Practitioners Do Surgery?
There has to be a lot more that is done than just some basic recommendations.
You have to be willing to offer your heart to that person.
Knowing that you as a person will have to take care of them instead of just being a nurse.
Older people are in a part of their life where they have largely accepted the inevitable death that’s coming for them.
See also: Can Nurses Pronounce Death?
This isn’t always a bad thing, but being depressed can make a person do things that they would’ve never thought were appropriate.
Every case is going to be different, which is why you need to pay close attention to what makes each case special.
Now you should know all about the nursing care plan for depression. If you would like to learn more, check out the related articles down below.
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