Anthony Stiles

Mental Health Nursing

T. Peck

16 October 2020

Belmont Pines: Acute Care

Today, I had the opportunity to spend the day with the children and adolescents at Belmont

Pines in Churchill, Ohio. I began the day by meeting with Bill, the nursing manager of the facility. He

explained all of the wings, different responsibilities of the facility, types of patients they take in, and

finally gave me a tour of the acute wing that I would be spending the day in. He left me at the front desk

in that wing and said I can just roam around and observe until the groups began. I explored the wing and

found a place to stand by all of the teenagers, who at the time were instructed to stand in their

doorways. They began asking me questions about who I was, where I was from, why I was there, and

other random questions (I did not answer truthfully about the personal questions). Some of them

opened up quickly about why they were there, however, others were very closed books about their

personal lives. I observed a total of three groups. The first, the teens were required to write examples of

personal hygiene required to be healthy and healthy coping skills that they found to be beneficial. The

second, we simply played Family Feud as a fun teambuilding exercise (my team blew the rest out of the

water). During the game of family feud, one of the boys moved me to the side to ask me some

questions. He began by showing me the cuts on his arm. He stated that he is not suicidal, he just cut

because he wanted to. He then proceeded to ask me why they are keeping him and what the big deal

was about his arm. I explained to him that despite his feeling that he didn’t want to kill himself that

there is an underlying reason why he would do such a thing; and that the workers of Belmont Pines care

about him and want to assist him in finding the root of the problem. The final group was a session with a

social worker. This was the most beneficial group session to these kids. She used crude language in

order to relate to the kids, and I was very impressed at how well it worked. Through her talking with
them I discovered why several of the teens were there and I believe they learned a lot about themselves

as well. Overall, I enjoyed my day. I found it very beneficial to observe younger people with mental

disorders and how the disorders affected them compared to older individuals.