Therapy for Clients with Sleep/Wake Disorders

The 70-year-old woman shows several signs and symptoms related to mental illness such as depression. She is often sad due to her loneliness. Her husband died years ago, and the son no longer lives with her. Also, she experiences several unexplained pains and aches in different parts of her body. Her movement is substantially limited thus denying her a chance to join other people in society and participate in communal activities. Besides losing interest in doing things that she previously liked, she is also experiencing insomnia. She also admitted having experienced symptoms of Major Depression Disorder; thus indicating that she had historical family depression. Her mother suffered from the disease, despite the external family having the issues of Alcohol Use Disorder. The recent development of the hearing problem due to Major Depression Disorder (MDD) for both of her ears has dramatically affected her ability to communicate and interact with others. MDD has contributed to her sadness and the choice to remain alone rather than in a crowd (Stahl, 2013).

Questions and Rationales

Given the explanation of the signs experienced by the woman, the following are some of the questions the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) would consider asking patient as a way of establishing the cause and extent of her illness.

1. Have you been diagnosed with depression before? This way, it is easy to conclude whether the woman has a mental disorder or not (Ball, Dains, Flynn, Solomon, & Stewart, 2015).

2. Any other member of the family, apart from your mother, both nuclear and extended suffering or who have ever suffered from depression? The question is to help establish if the disease is genetic or not. Again, it would be the best way to develop the most effective medication to give to the patient, probably those that might have worked for the family members before. For instance, in the case of Major Depression Disorder (MDD), treatment is likely to be based on the medication that seemed useful for the family (Dains, Baumann, & Scheibel, 2016).

3. Do you suffer from any drug abuse? The family has a history of continued drug use disorder that might influence the development of depression due to inability to access the drugs (Ball et al., 2015). Therefore, it will be easy to draw a base and ground from which one can help uplift her spirit on awful days.

People in Patient’s Life to Give a Feedback