Treat the brain: communicate with the mind

I had the great fortune of listening to Sandy Jeff’s keynote address at the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses Conference on the Gold Coast last year, and have just finished reading her remarkable book Flying with Paper Wings (Jeffs 2009). Both listening to and reading her work gave such a strong insight into Sandy’s personal experience of mental illness and the treatment provided by the mental health system. Her experiences are poignant and moving, and offer so much to mental health nursing in its ongoing quest to become a consumerfocused profession. During her keynote, Sandy made a simple but powerful statement: ‘Treat the brain; communicate with the mind’. These words resonated with me as a reminder of the humanity that is core to quality mental health nursing practice.