This article focuses on encounters that become violent, a problem in health care that has been the issue of many debates but is still not fully understood. Violent encounters refer to events where the patient expresses an aggressive and hostile attitude toward the caregiver. This study is part of a bigger project that aims to elucidate violent encounters from the caregivers' as well as the patients' perspectives. The purpose of this particular study was to describe the essence of violent encounters from the caregivers' perspective. Guided by a phenomenological method, data were analyzed within a reflective lifeworld approach. The essence of a violent encounter between caregivers and patients, as experienced by the caregivers, is a critical moment characterized by a tension between presence and distance, a moment where everything is happening at the same time. There are important meaning differences in relation to the violent encounter being viewed as positive rather than negative, based on the caregivers' ability to be present and their capacity in these trying situations to manage their fear. The findings also make explicit the particular knowledge that is needed for the caregiver to manage the threat of violence in a creative way.

Violence is a growing psychosocial problem in the health care working environment. Literature shows that nurses are physically assaulted, threatened, and verbally abused more often than other professionals. However, some nurses are able to relate to clients in a way that produces positive resolution. This study explored the phenomenon of positive encounters with aggressive and violent clients. Guided by a phenomenological method, data were analyzed within a lifeworld perspective. The essential meaning of the phenomenon of caregivers' experiences of encountering violent clients is described as an "embodied moment," which is explicated by seven themes of meaning, "respecting one's fear and respecting the client," "touch," "dialogue," "situated knowledge," "stability," "mutual regard," and "pliability." The authors discuss the meaning of the outcome and propose both theory and praxis-oriented activities toward decreasing aggression and violence in health care.

Today mental health professionals are challenged in supporting people with severe mental illness that live within their communities. The community treatment is, however, characterized by an uncertainty about how to best support them in their everyday lives, and professionals from different disciplines often have divergent opinions about the care. The aim of this study is to explicate the existential meaning of living with severe mental illness. Interviews with persons who relocated from an institutional setting to a community placement were analyzed within an interpretive approach. The results of the study found that people with severe mental illness experience an existential loneliness due to difficulties in changing previous suppositions about human relationships. They do not develop connections through shared new experiences with other people in their lives. One central implication of the findings is that because people with severe mental illness seem unable to benefit from new experiences, mental health nurses should consider relational aspects when planning, implementing, and evaluating nursing care.

The aim of this study is to analyze and describe lived experiences of being a father of an adult child with schizophrenia. Interpretations of interviews with seven Swedish fathers of sons or daughters with schizophrenia revealed a pattern of gradually changing existential consequences. After an initial period of shock when receiving the diagnosis, a long struggle to regain control follows. The findings are presented in a structure based on eight different aspects of this struggle, which seems to be characterized by a balance between grieving and adaptation. An important conclusion is that the fathers' life-world must be attended to in professional family interventions.

The aim of this study was to elucidate the existential meaning of being closely related to a person with bipolar disorder. A qualitative, descriptive, and explorative design with a phenomenological meaning-oriented analysis was used. The findings reveal a paradoxical, existential exposure of close relatives to a person with bipolar disorder, being both needed and rejected whilst being overshadowed by the specific changeable nature of bipolar disorder. Psychiatric health care services are recommended to consider changes in attitudes and structures that may facilitate close relatives’ participation in the care and treatment of persons with bipolar disorder.