Drug dependent persons tend to be repeatedly hospitalized. The purpose of this study was to describe how drug dependent persons experience their repeated hospitalizations to psychiatric hospitals and to discuss the possibility and problems in nursing care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven users of rehabilitation facilities who had histories of multiple hospitalizations to the psychiatric hospitals. Results were as follows: Concerning drug abuse, they had guilty feelings, which generated persecutory delusions among them. They could neither trust medical staff nor verbalize their feelings. Their inability to communicate their feelings verbally could be contrasted with those who attended peer-supported rehabilitation facilities. The latter persons found words to express their experiences. In the latter's recovery process, they also found someone who would be willing to offer help and would never give up on them. Lack of understanding concerning drug dependence on the part of health care professionals was an often talked topic of their narratives. These results suggested that nurses should help drug dependent persons work through their guilty feelings. Nurses should provide them information relevant to their recovery such as self-help group and peer supported facilities. Furthermore, generating hope and belief in recovery is very important for drug dependents as well as nurses.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify how nurses think about schizophrenia patients hospitalized for attempted suicide, how they actually care for them, and to consider care for preventing recurrence of suicidal attempts. Data was collected by interviews using semistructured questionnaires that were analyzed inductively and qualitatively. The study's subjects were seven nurses with more than five years of clinical experiences in the psychiatric field and with experiences providing nursing care to schizophrenia patients hospitalized for attempted suicide. Analysis of results indicated nursing care concentrated in three areas: (1) nursing care directly related to prevention of recurrence of suicide attempts, (2) basic psychiatric nursing care, and (3) daily nursing care. Nursing care directly related to prevention of recurrence of suicide attempts consisted of the following elements: (1) looking back at suicidal attempts, (2) promising to never attempt suicide again, (3) clarifying intention of death, (4) nursing care for controlling symptoms, (5) looking back at impulsive acts, and (6) measuring the timing involved in providing nursing care. Experience influencing nursing care consisted of three parts: (1) actually seeing or hearing about suicide attempts, (2) learning about nursing care for suicide patients from other nurses and (3) experience as a psychiatric nurse. The subjects had feelings of fear, difficulty, anxiety, and becoming oversensitive to patients. These feeling were influence by their experiences and generally affected nursing care. The results of this study will serve as a guideline for nursing care for recurrence prevention of suicide attempts of schizophrenia patients. This guideline identifies the focal points of clinical experience and the education required to gain the requisite experience as a psychiatric nurse and improve nursing ability.

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This research studied the subjective experience of psychiatric nurses who had suffered from violent actions of their inpatients to find out how to support them. Fourteen nurses were interviewed about the emotion aroused by the incidents and how they coped with it. The data were analyzed along the sequence of time. The victims' subjective experience immediately after the violence yielded 98 codes classified into 5 categories. Victims reported their emotional trauma with unendurable feelings denial of their personality, threat to their safety, loss of mutual trust with their patients, etc. They were vulnerable to their colleagues' indifferent attitude and careless interaction and felt healed by their immediate intervention. The victims tried to secure their safety and retrieve mutual trust with their patients. The victims subjective experience in the later stage yielded 239 codes classified into 6 categories. The victims gradually interpreted the meaning of their experience, which process helped them overcome their trauma. The emotion accompanying the memories of violence tended to grow intractable and disabled them to face their experience and interpret it. Therefore, the victims need the support enabling them to deal with their emotion. The attitude and interaction of the colleagues of the victims were the key factors for their recovery from the trauma. The recovery process of victims was disturbed by their colleagues' indifferent attitude and careless interaction and on the contrary, promoted by their caring attitude and careful interaction meeting the victims' needs.

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