y
,
,i
Therapeutic Communication in
Mental Health Nursing
This book introduces an innovative technique for therapeutic com-
munication in mental health nursing, expanding the toolkit for nurses
seeking to engage challenging patients who have not responded to more
conventional therapeutic methods. Linking nursing communication to
current research on metaphor and figuration, it is illustrated with acces-
sible clinical examples.
Metaphor is a key component of talk-based psychotherapies. But
many of the patients whom nurses encounter in the inpatient setting are
not good candidates for talk-based approaches, at least initially, because
they are violent, withdrawn, highly regressed, or otherwise lacking a
vocabulary to convey thoughts and feelings. This book offers specific
clinical examples of an approach called the “gestural bridge.” This is
a method for structuring games and physical activities which connect
metaphorically to a patient’s personal themes, activating narrative and
observational agency and enabling an exchange of meaning to begin
at a time when conventional language is not available. Rooted in what
nursing theorists have called the “embodied” or “aesthetic” way of
knowing, this approach is both specific and easily grasped.
Drawing from contemporary work in literary theory, semiotics, meta-
phor theory, cognitive science, philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and
the arts, Therapeutic Communication in Mental Health Nursing is impor-
tant reading for advanced-level practitioners, students, and researchers
interested in communication and relationship-building in nursing.
Shira Birnbaum is a psychiatric nurse, educator, writer, and artist. She
graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, and has worked
with chronically and acutely mentally ill adolescents, adults, and home-
less in a variety of institutional and outreach settings in the New York
and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. She is a project manager at the
Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College, City University
of New York.
,ii
,
,i
Therapeutic Communication in
Mental Health Nursing
This book introduces an innovative technique for therapeutic com-
munication in mental health nursing, expanding the toolkit for nurses
seeking to engage challenging patients who have not responded to more
conventional therapeutic methods. Linking nursing communication to
current research on metaphor and figuration, it is illustrated with acces-
sible clinical examples.
Metaphor is a key component of talk-based psychotherapies. But
many of the patients whom nurses encounter in the inpatient setting are
not good candidates for talk-based approaches, at least initially, because
they are violent, withdrawn, highly regressed, or otherwise lacking a
vocabulary to convey thoughts and feelings. This book offers specific
clinical examples of an approach called the “gestural bridge.” This is
a method for structuring games and physical activities which connect
metaphorically to a patient’s personal themes, activating narrative and
observational agency and enabling an exchange of meaning to begin
at a time when conventional language is not available. Rooted in what
nursing theorists have called the “embodied” or “aesthetic” way of
knowing, this approach is both specific and easily grasped.
Drawing from contemporary work in literary theory, semiotics, meta-
phor theory, cognitive science, philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and
the arts, Therapeutic Communication in Mental Health Nursing is impor-
tant reading for advanced-level practitioners, students, and researchers
interested in communication and relationship-building in nursing.
Shira Birnbaum is a psychiatric nurse, educator, writer, and artist. She
graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, and has worked
with chronically and acutely mentally ill adolescents, adults, and home-
less in a variety of institutional and outreach settings in the New York
and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. She is a project manager at the
Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College, City University
of New York.
,ii
