Six nurses attending the Post-Licentiate Specialisation Course in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing at the Nursing School of Coimbra created a blog to share ideas, feelings and experiences related to mental health.
This blog, still in its initial stage, aims to contribute to overcome the stigma associated to mental illnesses and patients, as underlined by the promoters of the project.
The six nurses of the Centre region, which are currently doing their clinical teaching in Community Mental Health Nursing at the Health Centre Norton de Matos (in Coimbra) emphasize that the blog may represent a very useful tool to implement their goals since, besides allowing for the transmission, dissemination and update of information on this issue – through several strategies of interaction – it also protects the identity of the users.
“Internet surfers have the opportunity to remain anonymous and hide or omit undesirable traits deriving from the stigma, which may become an advantage, especially when the person, afraid of being exposed, tries to hide behind the computer screen”, argue the blog promoters.
The blog Desvendar (Unravelling) (http://www.desvendar-nm.blogspot.com/) presents a set of tips for the preservation of mental health and has links to the Web page of the Associação de Apoio aos Doentes Depressivos e Bipolares and the Encontrar+se – Movimento Unidos Para Ajudar.
This blog is part of a wider project Projecto Desvendar – Domínio Cuidados Continuados e Reabilitação Psicossocial (Project Unravelling – Continuous Care and Psychosocial Rehabilitation Area), integrated in the work plan that the post-licentiate specialisation students are conducting in the Health Centre Norton de Matos, within the scope of the Clinical Teaching in Community Mental Health Nursing.
The nurses responsible for the blog Desvendar are Joel Oliveira, Conceição Pina, Marta Medeiros, Piedade Ferreira, Regina Rualde and Teresa Fontes. This group of students is supervised by Professor Maria Isabel Marques.
