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Unit of Study MHNS6004 - Physical Health Care in Mental Health (2021)

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Unit Snapshot

  • Enrolment information

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Unit description

Enhances the learner’s understanding and capability to ensure the consumer's holistic physical health needs including sexual health, diet and exercise, are being addressed within holistic mental health assessment, diagnosis and interventions. Consumers of mental health services have significantly shorter life spans than those without mental health problems and this unit will critically explore the evidence around this. Explores the relationships between mental illness, pharmacological treatments, non-pharmacological and alternate treatments and physical health outcomes.

Unit content

  • Physical wellbeing of mental health consumers: inequality, lifespan and modifiable risk factors such as obesity, smoking, chronic health conditions
  • Barriers to healthy lifestyles for mental health consumers: poverty, homelessness, stigma, symptoms
  • Physical repercussions of pharmacological treatments and interventions including metabolic syndrome
  • Nutrition, exercise and mental health
  • Sexual health: assessment and interventions 
  • Eating disorders

Availabilities

Location Domestic International
SCU Online
Study Period2,3
Study Period2,3

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

appraise the range of barriers that consumers have to achieving physically healthy lifestyles

critically analyse the impacts of pharmacological treatments in mental health on the physical health status of consumers

design and justify nutrition and exercise based interventions for inclusion within mental health treatment and wellness and prevention plans

design assessment and care planning practices to achieve helpful responses to the sexual health needs of consumers

create strategies to effectively support the mental health needs of those who are experiencing eating disorders

Prescribed learning resources

Prescribed Texts
  • No prescribed texts.

Prescribed Texts
  • No prescribed texts.

Prescribed Learning Resources may change in future Teaching Periods.