Patients with disordered water balance. Innovative psychiatric nursing intervention strategies.

1. Patients with disordered water balance (DWB) have difficulty with fluid intake/output and osmoregulation. These difficulties are characterized by polydipsia, polyuria, significant variation in pattern of excretion, abnormal diurnal weight gain, and behavioral changes. 2. Therapeutic milieu-management strategies for patients experiencing acute and chronic phases of DWB are the cornerstone of long-term management of these patients. 3. Implementation of the intervention and milieu-management strategies described in this article resulted in a reduction of patients requiring acute medical treatment subsequent to an acute phase of DWB.