Paper
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Veiling and Re-veiling Sexualities in a Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing Context
Agnes Higgins, MSc, BNS, RPN, RGN, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
| Learning Objective #1: Describe the current state of knowledge in relation to sexuality and psychiatric/mental health nursing. |
| Learning Objective #2: Discuss the theory of ‘Veiling Sexualities’
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The focus of this paper is on presenting the findings of a Grounded Theory study that aimed to explore how psychiatric nurse respond to issues of sexuality in practice. Using an unstructured interview, data were collected from 27 psychiatric nurses working in a mental health service in an urban area. The methodology that informed this study was Glaser’s approach to Grounded Theory. The core category to emerge from the data was conceptualised as ‘Veiling Sexualities’. ‘Veiling Sexualities’ describes the participants’ accounts of how they responded to the sexuality dimension of clients’ lives, through their practice of psychiatric nursing. The participants’ main concerns about sexuality were related to their feelings of personal and professional vulnerability, due to a lack of competence, comfort and confidence in this area of practice. The participants dealt with these feelings by a process conceptualised as the ‘Veiling-Reveiling Cycle’, which had three subcategories: ‘Hanging the Veil’, ‘Lifting the Veil’ and ‘Re-veiling’.