HEALTHCARE — NURSING
ASSIGNMENT 2- CASEWORLD - JUSTIN O’DOWD
CULTURALLY SAFE PRACTICE AND MENTAL HEALTH ASSESSMENT
Table of Contents
1. Impact of Justin’s Recent Life Events on his Well-being and Health    3
2. Difference between Justin’s and My Cultural Interpretation of Mental Illness    3
3. Influence of My Values and Attitudes about Mental Illness on Communication with Justin    3
4. Developing as well as Maintenance of Partnership of Justin with his Family and Relatives in his Journey towards Recovery    4
5. Cultural and Social Implications for Justin to leave his Home as well as Community for Treatment    4
6. Ensuring Justin’s Culturally Safe Care after Hospitalisation    4
7. Concerned Areas seeking Prior Care Planning for Justin    5
8. Communication Strategies or Skills supporting Recovery Focused and Culturally Safe Communication with Justin    5
9. Continuing Justin’s Recovery Post-Discharge    5
10. My Experiences of Relating to Differential Culture People, based on Justin’s Story and Identifying Gaps to eliminate in Future Practice    6
References    7
1. Impact of Justin’s Recent Life Events on his Well-being and Health
Justin O’Dowd, a 20-year-old man, belongs to the Indigenous community of Aboriginals in Australia. He had been living in the secluded mining area of Mount Rangeway, since his birth; and has been greatly influenced by his culture. He was interested to gain apprenticeship in mining, which was the community’s basic source of earning a living and help his parents, who were both Aboriginal Healthcare Providers at a local care setting— Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) and having type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
However, Justin’s life took an ugly turn when he was 11 and his father’s T2DM worsened for him to be hospitalised, leading to the first major setback in the form of Justin’s leaving school (Flinders University, 2014). At 15, he developed T2DM, consequently, losing on chances to be employed as a mining worker through apprenticeship. Lastly, when he was 19, his Uncle expired; whom he was the closest to, which led to the major effect to his life, rendering him into depression. As mentioned by Hinton et al. (2015), negative significant life events hamper health and well-being drastically if the person is not able to accept them easily.
2. Difference between Justin’s and My Cultural Interpretation of Mental Illness
Interpretation of mental illnesses on cultural basis is quite biased in case of indigenous community. Justin is an Aboriginal; hence, his mind-set is also quite influenced from the type of mind-set, his community possesses. According to Bennett-Levy et al. (2017), Aboriginals analyse the major causes behind mental illnesses to be due to disconnection from close ones, community base or home on a large ground. They also tend to ignore the practicality of life and base their interpretation on their culture, so much, so that they attribute their illnesses to their ‘past wrong deeds’, rather than their compromised lifestyles. Just as seen in case of Justin, when he was not being able to accept the death of Uncle Reggie, he went into depression and later attributed his condition to ‘possible wrong deeds in Aboriginal way’, rather than trying to recover from the grief (Flinders University, 2014). However, their interpretations differ from ours in the context that we analyse health and illnesses more practically, based on evidences.
3. Influence of My Values and Attitudes about Mental Illness on Communication with Justin
My values of life and the attitude I developed from these would largely affect my communication with Justin, if I had any, because, I, possessing a more practical outlook towards life, might face difficulty in relating to the type of sensibility Justin possesses. Justin attributes his life’s condition to the events that happened in it, which have forced him to withdraw from recovering. Therefore, his did not want to communicate properly about his issues with anyone. On the other hand, I would be more open to express my issues so that a proper solution could be found out. Similarly, as stated by Balaratnasingam et al. (2015), Aboriginals consider avoiding eye contact while speaking as a way to show respect, while people from other communities might not accept it in a similar way, thus, disrupting the communication between them. Hence, I too might face problem in interacting with him, due to my values being different from his in this context.
4. Developing as well as Maintenance of Partnership of Justin with his Family and Relatives in his Journey towards Recovery
As seen in case of...