An Axial Representation of Community Mental Health Nursing Diagnoses of a Country at War: El Salvador

This paper explores the impact of a workshop on the formulation of community mental health diagnoses in El Salvador. The author taught the process of diagnosis from the NANDA framework and explored diagnostic decision making through Caplan's Crisis Model. An epidemiologic framework was also incorporated in the diagnostic process so that host, agent, and environment could be scrutinized. The workshop resulted in the formulation of three universal community mental health diagnoses for this (then) war-torn country: depression, aggression, and anxiety; the development of a proposal for the implementation of mental health services; and an invitation to explore implementation of community mental health care services in five rural communities in El Salvador. Although the politics of El Salvador have changed, this example is typical of many Third-World and war-torn countries.