Stephen Haines

This proposed research seeks to explore how nurses in community mental health care settings balance the potential for conflicting care priorities in providing recovery-oriented and trauma-informed clinical care with the requirement to practice in a coercive manner that minimises the risks of self-harm or harm to others by their consumers.

With the rising numbers of mental health consumers living in the community subject to involuntary treatment orders, nurses in public community mental health settings are increasingly required to deliver coercive care. However, this risks promoting recovery-oriented care principles and may cause further harm in contradiction to trauma-informed models of care. The study aims to use a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand how nurses in community settings balance the risks and benefits of coercive mental health treatment and inform the development of a model of care seeking to educate novice mental health nurses, into this critical component of care.