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Background: Research on coping and resilience is on the rise. However, there is a paucity of information addressing strengths, assets, competence or resilience that enable nurses to remain committed and cope in their profession despite the adversities they face in their working environment. Objective: The purpose of this research was to explore and describe how to strengthen the resilience of nurses in a work environment with involuntary mental health care users. Method: An exploratory and descriptive research design, which is contextual in nature, was used. Results: Narrative responses to two open-ended questions (How do you cope with providing mental health care to involuntary admitted mental health care users? and; How can your resilience be strengthened to provide mental health care to involuntary mental health care users?) yielded coping mechanisms and resilience strengthening strategies. Conclusion: Nurses caring for involuntary mental health care users are faced with challenging situations while they themselves experience internal conflict and have limited choices available to be assertive. To strengthen their resilience, the following factors should be taken into account: support, trained staff, security measures and safety, teamwork and in-service training and education.

Background: Relapse prevention in mental health care is important. Utilising the strengths of families can be a valuable approach in relapse prevention. Studies on family strengths have been conducted but little has been done on the strengths of family members to help limit relapse in mental health care users. The purpose of this research was to explore and describe the strengths of family members in assisting mental health care users to limit relapses.Methods: A phenomenological design was followed. Purposive sampling was used and 15 family members of mental health care users who have not relapsed in the previous two years participated. Individual unstructured interviews were conducted. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Four main themes were identified, namely accepting the condition of the mental health care users, having faith, involving the mentally ill family members in daily activities and being aware of what aggravates the mentally ill family members.Conclusions: Family members go through a process of acceptance and receive educational information and assistance from health professionals. In this process families discover and apply their strengths to limit relapses of mentally ill family members. It is important that family members caring for mentally ill family members are involved in their treatment from the onset, and that they are guided through a process of acceptance.Keywords: Families mental health care users, Mentally ill family members, Resilience, Relapse, Strengths