AN INVESTIGATION ON THE BEHAVIOR OF NURSES TOWARDS RELAPSE PREVENTION AMONG PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS

Background Of Study: For generations, those who practise medicine, scientists, and philosophers have been both captivated and perplexed by mental health conditions. Its symptoms have been ascribed to possession by demons, regarded to be retribution by the gods for the evil done, or recognised as proof of the inhumanity of its afflicted victims. All of these explanations are based on the belief that it is the gods who are punishing the evildoers. Because of this, those who were diagnosed with such diseases were subjected to persistent discrimination (Ademola, 2022). Even in modern times, there is still a significant amount of the stigma that exists, despite the fact that it has less to do with demonic possession and more to do with society's inability to bear the enormous expense that is involved with mental illness. One of the most serious issues that may arise from having a mental condition is relapse. It affects more than two million individuals and accounts for around 1.3% of all instances of mental illness that have previously been treated. It is virtually impossible to put a price on the amount of pain that a relapse causes to both people and families (Boyd, 2022).

There is still an alarming incidence of relapse and the re-occurrence of mental disease all over the world, notwithstanding the present trend in contemporary therapy. Every day, people who ought to be useful and responsible in life are squandering their time instead of focusing on being productive. Patients are now obliged to spend just a brief amount of time in the hospital before being allowed to return home. This is done with the goal of lowering patients' reliance on medical care and the likelihood of future relapses. This helps to eliminate the stigma associated with the condition as well as avoid consequences.

Over the course of the last several years, one issue that has been problematic is the high rate of patients who have had readmission to the hospital. Because of this, it has become hard to obtain a decent level of symptom management in patients and to treat them. The irritation that the nurses felt was evident as they saw the readmission of patients who had just recently been let home after being stabilised in the hospital. Some individuals have a recurrence as soon as they return to their homes after being treated (Denzin, 2022). Others who are on trial release end up relapsing, while others continue to do so even while they are in. The relapse of patients has been contributed to by a number of different circumstances, including financial difficulties and a shortage of competent personnel. Some patients have a travel time to the hospital of about one or two days, which results in inadequate monitoring and accessibility to mental health care. Stigmatization and dependence on a caretaker are two other contributing elements to consider. All of these factors have played a role in the high rate of recurrence that has been seen in the treatment of various categories of patients, which has ultimately resulted in the patients' inability to function in society, as well as in tremendous misery, financial restrictions, and societal annoyance (BURGESS, 2022). Within the context of our hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between the attitudes of nurses and relapse prevention among psychiatric patients, the purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of nurses working at the Federal neuropsychiatric hospital in Barnawa, Kaduna, toward the prevention of relapses among psychiatric patients.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Substance abuse, clinical and research attention should logically focus on the goal of relapse prevention. Yet we know remarkably little about this area. Several recent reviews of interventions for people with dual disorders note that existing studies emphasize engagement in treatment, motivation for remission, or initiation of remission rather than emphasizing relapse prevention.

To develop interventions and sup- ports for relapse prevention, one critical step is to understand the timing and predictors of relapse. Thus the purpose of the study reported here was to analyze the pattern and predictors of substance abuse relapse in a ten-year prospective follow-up of patients with co-occurring severe mental and substance use disorder substance use disorder, or substance abuse, is a chronic, relapsing illness. Cross-sectional studies of patients with dual diagnoses consistently show that their substance use disorders are often in remission. Although this finding could be taken as evidence of recovery from substance use disorder, prospective longitudinal studies some of which are presented in this special section of Psychiatric Services; indicate that remission and relapse represent dynamic processes. That is, although many patients who enter outpatient mental health or dual disorder programs achieve full remission within months, most of these patients relapse to active substance abuse. For example, two separate prospective longitudinal follow-up studies showed that the overall rate of active substance abuse did not change because as many individuals relapsed as achieved remission.

There are several debates on the impacts of mental relapse on patients, a lot of these debates gave out useful information on mental relapse prevention and treatment but none did touched the attitude of health workers towards relapse prevention in Nigeria. This work is set to uncover the attitude of nurses in Federal neuropsychiatric hospital Barnawa Kaduna towards relapse prevention among psychiatric patients.