Psychiatric Emergencies in Nursing

A patient who was calm an hour ago is now pacing, shouting, refusing to be approached. Is this psychosis breaking through? Fear? A reaction to medication? Or something physical that has nothing to do with mental illness at all?

In that moment, a nurse doesn't have time to look it up. They have to think and act at the same time - and getting it wrong can cost a life or a patient's dignity.

Psychiatric Emergencies in Nursing is a practical, clinically grounded guide for exactly that moment. Drawing on more than 20 years of frontline and forensic psychiatric nursing experience, Dr Emmanuel Bimenyimana walks new and student nurses through the real reasoning process behind recognising, assessing and managing a psychiatric crisis safely, humanely, and within the nurse's actual scope of practice.

This is not a textbook of diagnoses. It's a way of thinking under pressure, built chapter by chapter around the situations nurses actually face on the ward:

• What actually makes a situation a psychiatric emergency, not just a difficult one
• The first few minutes: assessment and immediate priorities when something changes
• Aggression and violence - recognising escalation before it becomes dangerous
• Suicide and self-harm: assessing and responding when a patient's life is at risk
• Psychosis, disorganisation and mania: when a patient loses behavioural control
• Telling a medical emergency apart from a psychiatric one hiding underneath it
• The point where a crisis becomes a life-threatening emergency
• Restraint, coercion and patient rights - using the least restrictive approach
• The human factor: team dynamics, debriefing and growing as an emergency nurse

Each chapter is grounded in real clinical reasoning, not just protocol recitation, and includes case scenarios and reflection exercises so nurses can think through a crisis before they're standing in the middle of one.

Whether you're a nursing student preparing for your first psychiatric placement, a newly qualified nurse building confidence, or an experienced nurse who wants a clear framework to fall back on under pressure, this book is written to meet you exactly where the moment gets hard.