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Accessible summary: What is known on the subject?: Medication does not always resolve a serious mood episode, and there is evidence that it needs to be combined with an evidence‐based psychotherapy to promote symptomatic and functional recovery.There is little known about what people with serious mood disorders want from mental health services to manage their mood. What the paper adds to existing knowledge?: Participants in this study wanted a framework other than the medical model for understanding and managing their mood.Their motivation to commence psychotherapy was based on a sense of having hit rock bottom and a need for understanding what was happening in order to better manage their mood. Introduction: There is little known about the motivations for people to participate in psychotherapy for depression. Aim: To explore why people, with a diagnosis of major depressive episode, chose to take part in a psychotherapy study and what they expected it to involve. Method: This was a qualitative study of participants' motivations and understandings of psychotherapy for depression. Data were collected using semi‐structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: Eight females and eight males with an age range from 21 years to 55 years were recruited. Three themes were identified that described why participants chose to participate in psychotherapy: medication was not enough, a turning point and making sense of experience. The participants chose to participate in psychotherapy after finding that medication was insufficient and this combined with a sense of crisis motivated them to engage in psychotherapy in order to learn to manage their mood differently. Discussion: The participants recognized that they wanted a framework other than a medical model with its reliance on medication, in order to make sense of their experiences and develop new self‐management strategies. Implications for Practice: Our study suggests that some people experiencing a serious mood disorder access psychotherapy after "hitting rock bottom" and finding insufficient help from medications. Mental health nurses need to be aware people do not always want a medical model approach to treatment of serious mood disorders and they need to provide the opportunity of engaging in a psychotherapeutic framework in order to better understand and manage their mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary What is known about the subject? Citizenship is an important yet largely overlooked concept within psychiatric and mental health nursing practice, Many service users are subject to legally mandated restrictions that place conditions on their rights and responsibilities as citizens., What this paper adds to existing knowledge? Even though service users have legal status as citizens, they continue to experience many conditions on their rights and responsibilities., Concerns about services users' trustworthiness and doubts about their levels of insight impact on their status as full citizens., What are the implications for practice? Nurses' understandings of the conditions placed on the citizenship rights and responsibilities of service users will ensure inclusive and less restrictive care and treatment, Integration of the principles of therapeutic reciprocity and procedural justice within practice will help nurses balance both the rights of services users and legal restrictions on their liberty and autonomy, Abstract Introduction Service users have long been lobbying for equal participation as citizens, yet citizenship is an important and largely overlooked concept within nursing education and practice. Aims The study explored service users' understandings of their rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the conditions placed on these. Methods A total of 17 service users participated in semi-structured interviews. Isin's theory of the content of citizenship was used to analyze the data using a framework approach. Results Service users experience conditional citizenship that includes barriers to their participation and their rights and responsibilities that others in society enjoy. Discussion When the world of the service user is constructed through the language of the biomedical model, nurses may unwittingly reinforce psychiatric labels and thus perpetuate the stereotype that service users lack the competence to fully enact their rights and responsibilities. Implications for practice When providing care, nurses should incorporate the notion of therapeutic jurisprudence and the principles of reciprocity, procedural justice and the implementation of advanced directives to reduce conditions on service users' status as citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]