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Mental health nurse

Two NHS staff members looking at document book

A day as a mental health nurse

You work in the community, and spend the morning visiting people’s homes, helping them have a good quality of life and manage their mental health problems. You always involve families and other healthcare workers to make the best plans to care for someone, because you know it can involve talking treatments, medicines or lots of other different kinds of therapies. Everyone needs to work together and know what each other is doing.

You always encourage people to talk about how they feel, because you’re always aware that people need to feel comfortable talking about their mental health, and not feel guilty or ashamed if they have a mental health problem.

In the afternoon, you visit someone who needed to be admitted to hospital for a short time because they were very poorly. You talk to your fellow nurses who work on the wards looking after this person, discussing how you can all work together to enable them to continue their recovery at home with their family as soon as possible.