Dis-ease between nursing and feminism: nurses caring for one another within a feminist framework

Mental health professionals have the experience and skills necessary to provide care and support to colleagues and peers in these troubled and stressful times. Yet, traditionally nurses have not been supportive of one another. Not receiving much interest from the feminist movement and not willingly to embrace feminist social activism, the nursing profession has suffered as it continues to embrace racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic outdated theories and research practices. Without a collective voice which unites all nurses in a common struggle, issues related to mental health nursing will continue to be viewed in a fragmented way. Until feminist research, theory, and practice become central to the profession's ideology, nurses will continue to be divided among themselves, unable to provide the necessary caring for one another.