Introduction
In the nine years since the first edition of this book, mental health care has seen considerable change. Numerous guidelines for clinical practice, with accompanying reviews of evidence, have sought to direct the practice is organized, while the debate over the role of mental health nursing in providing that care has recently been revived in England by, among other things, the chief nursing officer’s review of mental health nursing in 2006 (Department of Health (DH)2006). Regardless of how care is organized, and the role of the nursing in its organization, however, our original aim in the first edition of mental health nursing ; An Evidence-based Approach remains unchanged.
The need for access to appropriate evidence on which to base our clinical practice as nurses, is, if anything, more pressing. As the evidence bases grows, our responsibility as nurses to use that evidence wisely grows proportionately. nurses, including mental health nurses, remain the largest professional group in the national health service (NHS), with the most frequent contact with patients and clients. As a consequence, we should have a strong voice within the provision of mental health care. Evidence-based practice (EBP), clinical effectiveness and clinical governance agendas offer an opportunity to exercise that voice, because of the notion within these initiatives that care provision should be based on an allocation of resources according to the effectiveness of the proposed care provided and adequacy of the systems for monitoring of that care, rather than vested professional interests (DH 1996, 1997). It is, however, unlikely that these initiatives will cause existing power structures to wither away. On the contrary, nurses may find the need for