How can the mental health nurse best advocate for individuals with mental illness and prevent stigmatization?

Choice A reason: After diagnosis, setting goals and outcomes guides care, addressing issues like serotonin-driven depression. Goals, like “improve mood stability,” align with neurobiological needs, ensuring measurable, patient-centered targets. This step precedes interventions, forming the foundation for effective psychiatric treatment planning.

Choice B reason: Designing interventions follows goal-setting. Interventions, like therapy for dopamine imbalances, are based on established outcomes. Acting prematurely without goals risks misaligned care, as neurobiological targets must be defined first, making this step incorrect as the immediate next action.

Choice C reason: Implementation occurs after goals and interventions are set. Acting before defining outcomes, like stabilizing GABA for anxiety, risks ineffective care. The nursing process requires sequential planning to address neurobiological deficits, making implementation premature and incorrect at this stage.

Choice D reason: Spiritual assessment, while valuable, is part of initial data collection, not the next step after diagnosis. Goals addressing neurobiological issues, like serotonin deficits, take precedence to ensure targeted care. This option is irrelevant to the immediate planning phase of the nursing process.

Choice A reason: Flooding involves intense, immediate exposure to the feared stimulus, like elevators, overwhelming amygdala-driven fear responses. This contrasts with gradual exposure, which calms norepinephrine surges incrementally. Flooding is less controlled and riskier, making it incorrect for the described gradual relaxation technique.

Choice B reason: Systematic desensitization pairs gradual exposure to a fear, like elevators, with relaxation to reduce amygdala hyperactivity and norepinephrine-driven panic. This counterconditions fear responses, promoting calm neural pathways, aligning with the described technique and making it the correct choice for this therapeutic approach.

Choice C reason: Combination therapy involves multiple modalities, like medication and psychotherapy, not specifically gradual exposure with relaxation. The described technique targets phobia-specific amygdala responses, not a broad approach, making combination therapy too vague and incorrect for this targeted intervention.

Choice D reason: Cognitive restructuring modifies thought patterns, not exposure-based fear responses. While it addresses distorted beliefs, the described technique uses relaxation with gradual exposure to reduce norepinephrine-driven panic, not cognitive reframing, making this incorrect for the specific therapeutic method described.