Should I learn martial arts for psych nursing?

[Wanderer RN]

So I'm a new nurse, recently graduated and now working in critical care. There is this persistent calling within me to be a mental health nurse. (Bit of background info; I've always been very interested in the human mind, reading psychology textbooks as pleasure reading.)

During my psych rotations in nursing school, we were given a very brief lesson on self-defense for our encounters with a forensic inpatient population in a state hospital. The calling to do mental health nursing grows stronger each day, and I'm wondering if it is wise and/or prudent to learn a few self-defense methods so as to avoid injury that I may or may not encounter in dealing with mentally broken people.

Let me make myself clear here. I have absolutely no intention of using violence against any person, patient or otherwise. I'm only interested in keeping my own person safe.

If you, or someone you know, is a mental health nurse, have you taken up self-defense courses to prevent bodily harm?

[Neurotic Student]

We get a yearly MAB class, which I forget it after about a week. If you take classes on the regular, like having sparring sessions, it could possibly decrease your reactive fight response a little. Other than that, I know you aren't allowed anything other than proper MAB techniques. I think self-defense has some blocks that would be beneficial to you. You could practice defense moves rather than attacks and counterattacks. I think to say that you cannot use any martial arts at all is unfair. You can use blocks/blocking moves that will not hurt the other person if it really comes down to it. After all, isn't MAB somewhat a derivative of self-defense moves?

As everyone as said though, verbal deescalation is first, and usually you wouldn't approach by yourself unless you were seasoned but even then, it would be wise to approach with others. You can usually anticipate when a patient will become violent. There are rare cases where you won't see it coming but it's rare. Honestly, if it came down to patient hold me down and I cannot run or scream, then I probably might hurt him but you're going to be cautious in the first place and avoid a situation where that could happen.

Your first modes of action should be anticipation, alert others of pt's agitation first (if possible) so that if verbal deescalation is ineffective, others are ready to spring into action or verbally deescalate. Some people are better than others at verbal deescalation.