Nursing and the Emergence of Egoless Care: A Discussion on Social Engineering in Mental Health.

The narrowing of the diverse fields of psychiatry to just the single dimension of the biomedical model has resulted in a situation where professions with a focus on curing (psychiatrists and psychologists) are favoured over those with a focus on caring and encouraging near communities to care for each other (nurses). The social engineering of mental problems leads to a state of helplessness. This paper contributes to an understanding of the barriers to utilise the social resources of people with mental health problems and argues for forms of "indirect social engineering" and "egoless care," and, ultimately, a rediscovery of nursing, using the mental health care in the Netherlands as a case study.