OCR Text |
Show MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS Stanley F. Yolles, M.D., Director National Institute of Mental Health NURSING CAREERS IN MENTAL HEALTH Job opportunities of all kinds are greater and more challenging challeng-ing today than ever before in the expanding field of mental health work and nowhere is this more true than in mental health nursing. You can enter an interesting career in mental health nursing with a high school education or any educational level beyond. Nursing personnel are urgently ur-gently needed at all levels. All kinds of health facilities are critically short of such personnel. person-nel. Mental health nursing jobs are open in vast and increasing numbers in: Community mental health centers, psychiatric hospitals, general hospitals, public health and other community agencies, children's treatment services and day care centers, health services for the elderly, mental retardation facilities, alcoholism treatment centers, drug abuse treatment centers, Public Health Service, Armed Forces, Veterans Vet-erans Administration, Indian Health Service. Jobs are begging to be filled. One out of every four positions for psychiatric nurses, for example, ex-ample, in state mental hospitals is vacant, a survey shows. Jobs in mental health nursing nurs-ing include attendants, orderlies, order-lies, aides, and so on, jobs not requiring college degrees. Many centers and hospitals nowadays are providing special training courses for such personnel or earn-while-you-learn opportunities. opportuni-ties. Mental health nursing opportunities oppor-tunities also include jobs to be filled by people with an associate asso-ciate degree, hospital diploma or bachelor's degree. The associate degree program is usually a 2-year course offered of-fered by a junior or community college. There you would study general college subjects and receive re-ceive nursing training in cooperation coop-eration with a community hospital hos-pital or health agency. The hospital diploma program pro-gram is a 2'2-to-3-year program pro-gram offered by a hospital training train-ing school. It may also include academic courses at a neighboring neighbor-ing college. Training in psychiatric psy-chiatric nursing is also given. Bachelor's degrees in nursing result from a 4-year college course. Students attend regular regu-lar academic and professional classes and study clinical nursing nurs-ing in hospitals and public health agencies. Psychiatric and community nursing are always included in a college nursing program. After the bachelor's degree, education may be continued to the master's or doctoral degrees in psychiatric nursing for positions posi-tions in nursing administration, research, services, or teaching. |