Mental illness has been stigmatized for ages, in the media, in every day conversations, and even in healthcare facilities. Let’s be real — Nurse Ratched and her unethical care usually springs to mind when we think about psychiatry. In reality, mental health nursing should be nothing like that, and the specialty should not be looked down upon by other healthcare providers. Misinformation and stigma deters new nurses from going into psychiatric care even when they are passionate about it. So let’s debunk these 5 popular myths about mental health nursing!

Myth #1: You’ll lose your nursing skills working in mental health.

REALITY: Just because it’s not med-surg, it doesn’t mean there won’t be medical tasks. IVs and saline locks, wound care and dressings, bladder scans and in & outs, CBG checks and insulin…I’ve seen all of these within a week of my job orientation! Although you won’t see each of these tasks every day, it wouldn’t take you long to brush up on skills that you haven’t practiced in a while. You passed nursing school, which means you’ve developed the ability to learn new and old nursing skills alike.

Myth #2: All you’ll do is talk to your patients; you won’t build any transferable skills.

REALITY: Like any specialty in nursing, you’ll develop specialized skills. Yes, there’s a lot of talking involved, but talking is not a meaningless activity. You may run groups, lead CBT/DBT, de-escalate a heated situation, or manage a milieu of patients. Effective communication is essential in every area of nursing, and mental health nurses are champions of therapeutic communication. Mental health nurses are also constantly developing their critical thinking and decision-making to predict behavior and handle ethical dilemmas. Plus, every patient in a hospital is a “mental health patient” since mental health and physical health are intertwined. You can’t generalize the same about cardiology or gynecology.

Myth #3: Mental health nursing is all about sedating and restraining patients.

REALITY: While there may be a need to use restraints in extreme cases, we don’t sedate patients! We use medications for acute agitation based on informed decisions. Unfortunately drowsiness can be a side effect especially with a higher dose. Chemical and physical restraints should always be used as a last resort, meaning you’ve exhausted all other options. You should always start with verbal de-escalation at the first signs of behavior change and try to understand the root cause of the change. Miscommunication about policies when you take a patient’s belongings away from them? An elderly patient has unmet basic needs? A child with ASD feels overwhelmed? This is only a fraction of what mental health nurses do every day.

Myth #4: Once you go into mental health you’ll never be able to switch to another area of nursing.

REALITY: You’re the master of your own life and if switching from psychiatry to another specialty is what you want to do, you can do it. Many mental health nurses stay in this field because they enjoy the work they do! A nurse working on a cardiac unit may have just as much difficulty switching to mental health as the other way around. Don’t be discouraged by seasoned nurses who feel like they trapped themselves in psychiatry. As a nurse, you’re expected to practice continuing education anyway. So if you want to switch fields, you’re more than capable of doing what you need to do to achieve your goal!

Myth #5: Mental health nurses are a little “off” themselves.

REALITY: Out of all these myths, this one really shows the prevalence of stigma toward the field, especially amongst other nurses. This idea probably came about when nurses encountered “difficult” patients on non-psychiatric units and thought, “only someone ‘crazy’ would want to have a patient like this.” This statement is super unfair! The reality is that med-surg units are typically unequipped to handle patients with simultaneous acute medical and psychiatric issues. But anyhow, I don’t think people ever say, “She works on the GI unit because she has her own GI issues.” Mental health nurses who are in this field for the right reasons are strong and deeply empathetic, and not afraid to face the unknown in a world that insists on bringing them down.

Have you heard any of these myths about mental health nursing before? Whether or not you work in this field, I hope that I was able to influence your perception of the field in a positive way. If you’ve heard of any mental health nursing myths that I didn’t mention, please share it in the comments!