Uniting the family of psychiatric nurses: commonalities and divergences in the nursing lives we lead.

ABSTRACT

We have created a new column that will focus on the state of psychiatric nursing around the world and on the increasingly important need for all of us, the family of psychiatric nurses, to begin to explore more deeply, and strengthen in more focused ways, the ties that bind all of us. We begin with an article that presents an international perspective on psychiatric illness and mental health promotion and ends by identifying common concerns often shared by the world's psychiatric nurses. Susan McCabe has a unique ability to blend the hard-core facts with a compassionate and intelligent point of view that is compelling and understandable. She is currently an associate professor at the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, University of Wyoming. She is an international speaker who presented at many international venues including the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Research Conference in the Virgin Islands in 2003 and the International Conference for Mental Health Nurses in Malta in 2002, a gathering that explored and discussed global issues of mental illness and psychiatric nursing. She is also frequently a keynote speaker or presenter at numerous psychiatric nursing conferences and has published extensively in several refereed journals and book chapters. She has expressed a deep desire for other psychiatric nurses to add their voices to hers and to comment and dialogue about our practice lives via the journal.