NursingResearch paperPsychiatric nursing

Cultural competency in mental health nursing paper

A three-page evidence-based practice paper structured on the nursing process, describing how cultural awareness is included for a client with a mental illness across assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation.

Aug 13, 2026

Editorial process

Last reviewed · August 13, 2026

Written by

Aaron Bishop

MA, Education

assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines

Reviewed by

Dr. Nathan Cole

PhD, Rhetoric & Composition

Argumentation and thesis development

On this page

Interpret the task
Assignment instructions
Deliverables
Proposed outline
Research plan
Reference shortlist
Final review

One client carried through five stages

The paper is organised by the nursing process, and that structure is doing real work: it forces cultural competence out of the abstract and into decisions. A paper that describes cultural awareness in psychiatric nursing generally will satisfy none of the five headings, because each one asks what you did or would do for one particular client. Choose that client early, from a clinical placement, from past work, or as a constructed theoretical case, and give them enough specificity to generate real decisions: a diagnosis, a treatment setting, a family situation, and a set of practices that bear directly on care. The prompt widens culture deliberately to include gender, sexual orientation and cultures unique to one family, so a client whose cultural salience is not race or religion is a legitimate and often stronger choice, because it forces you to assess rather than to recall a checklist.

The requirement most often missed sits in the diagnosis section: include at least one cultural diagnosis. That means a nursing diagnosis whose aetiology is cultural rather than one that merely mentions culture, and it has to be phrased in the standard problem-related-to-evidence form. Impaired verbal communication related to a language difference, or non-adherence related to a conflict between prescribed dosing and a fasting practice, both qualify. The implementation section then asks for at least two interventions, and the example given in the prompt, where religious belief affects medication taking, indicates the level of specificity expected. Evaluation is the section that separates strong papers: the prompt demands objective and measurable parameters, so name what you would count and when. If the interventions have not been carried out, the prompt offers a route, which is to discuss institutional changes that would improve cultural safety for all clients in that setting.

Likely learning objectives

Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.

01
Assess the cultural dimensions of care for a client with a mental illness.
02
Write a nursing diagnosis whose aetiology is cultural rather than incidental.
03
Plan for cultural and emotional safety in a psychiatric setting.
04
Design interventions that resolve a specific conflict between care and cultural practice.
05
Set objective, measurable parameters for evaluating a cultural intervention.

Assignment instructionsQuoted verbatim

Read the full question

Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.

Submit an evidence-based practice paper about cultural competency in mental health nursing. An evidence-based practice paper allows you to explore best practice and help improve client outcomes on a psychiatric unit. Your paper should describe how you, as a nurse, will include – or have included – cultural awareness in a client diagnosed with a mental illness. The person you describe could be someone in your clinical setting, someone you have worked with in the past, or a theoretical client. Remember that culture can also include gender equality, sexual orientation, and other cultures besides race and religion – including cultures unique to one particular family. Your paper should be at least 3 pages (double-spaced, not including the title or reference pages) in APA Format and include: Assessment: Discuss what you would assess in regard to a client’s culture. For example, are there specific dietary requirements? Are schedule changes necessary to avoid conflicts with religious practices? Who is the spokesperson for the family? What would you assess? Diagnosis: List any mental health nursing diagnoses this person has or may be at risk for. Include at least one cultural diagnosis. Planning: What planning needs to be done to ensure the cultural and emotional safety of the client? Implementation: What are interventions that would ensure the safety of your client in regard to culture? Include at least two interventions. For example, if your client has religious beliefs that affect the ability to take medications, what interventions would you create to ensure the client’s safety? What can you do to make sure the client’s cultural needs are met? Evaluation: How will you evaluate whether your implementation was effective? Make sure the parameters are objective and measurable. In your summary, discuss whether any completed interventions were successful. What could be done differently in the future? If the interventions have not yet been carried out, you might discuss some institutional changes that could be made to ensure cultural safety for all clients in that setting. Your paper should utilize proper APA guidelines and include at least three scholarly sources to support your paper. A scholarly source is a source that has been peer reviewed and has appropriate authors that are credentialed. For more information on APA, please visit the Online Library

Course-wide instructions that accompany this question

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

Turn the brief into deliverables

01
An assessment section covering what you would assess about the client's culture.
02
Nursing diagnoses the client has or is at risk for, including at least one cultural diagnosis.
03
A planning section addressing cultural and emotional safety.
04
At least two interventions ensuring safety in relation to culture.
05
An evaluation section with objective, measurable parameters.
06
A summary discussing success, alternatives, or institutional changes if interventions were not carried out.
07
At least three peer-reviewed scholarly sources.

Assessment to evaluation

Assessment

What you would assess: diet, schedule and religious practice, family spokesperson, language, beliefs about illness.

Diagnosis

Actual and risk diagnoses, including at least one with a cultural aetiology.

Planning

What must be arranged for cultural and emotional safety on the unit.

Implementation

Two or more interventions, each resolving a named conflict between care and practice.

Evaluation

Objective, measurable parameters and when they would be checked.

Summary

What worked, what you would change, or the institutional changes the setting needs.

Evidence for the interventions, not for the topic

Recommended databases

CINAHL
PubMed
PsycINFO
APNA resources
Office of Minority Health

Search sequence

1.
Search for cultural adaptation of psychiatric nursing interventions in your client's population.
2.
Read the CLAS standards for the organisational obligations behind your planning section.
3.
Find a source on cultural formulation to structure the assessment questions.
4.
Look for evidence on medication adherence and religious or dietary practice.
5.
Check current nursing diagnosis phrasing before drafting the diagnosis section.

Reference shortlist

These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.

Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.

01
Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services
Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · 2024
The organisational standards behind the planning and institutional-change sections.
02
Cultural Religious Competence in Clinical Practice
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Belief-and-practice conflicts of exactly the kind the implementation section must resolve.
03
Cultural Competence in the Care of LGBTQ Patients
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Supports the prompt's widening of culture beyond race and religion.
04
Nursing Process
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Keeps the five headings doing distinct work rather than repeating each other.

Review before submission

Common mistakes

Writing about cultural competence in general rather than about one client.
Offering a diagnosis that mentions culture without making it the aetiology.
Supplying one intervention when the prompt asks for at least two.
Evaluating with subjective parameters such as the client seeming more comfortable.
Reducing culture to race and religion when the prompt explicitly widens it.
Citing sources that are not peer reviewed or whose authors are not credentialed.

Submission checklist

All five nursing-process headings appear.
One client is carried consistently through every section.
At least one diagnosis has a cultural aetiology in problem-related-to form.
Two or more interventions are stated concretely.
Evaluation parameters are objective and measurable.
The summary addresses either outcomes or institutional change.
Three or more peer-reviewed sources are cited in APA format.
The paper is at least three pages excluding title and references.

Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.