Rethinking professional attitudes in mental health settings

Given that the psychiatric nursing standards developed by the American Nurs es Association strongly advocate the inclusion of families in treatment set tings, the study discussed in this article sought to determine how families were actually experiencing care in mental health settings for children and adolescents. The aim was to elicit the perspectives of parents whose child ren were hospitalized in psychiatric hospitals and to examine those experie nces against the ideal rhetoric set forth by the standards of care. Results of in-depth interviews with a purposeful sample ofparen ts demonstrate tha t there is a significant gap between standards and practice.