Psychiatric nurses: Key to filling the gap in the mental health crisis?

Increasingly, employers who offer health benefits to their workers are asking their benefits advisors to help them support plan members’ mental health. Telehealth solutions that target mental health concerns evolved rapidly during the pandemic and are becoming an acceptable alternative to scheduling in-person sessions with local therapists.

Now, a national organization that represents psychiatric-mental health nurses (PMH-RNs) has launched a campaign to call attention to the role that such nurses can, and should, play in treating mental health situations.

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association recently published a white paper (Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurses Are Key to Addressing the Nation’s Mental Health Crisis) that cites data supporting a growing mental health crisis in the U.S. The paper advocates for PMHs to assume greater responsibility for treating mental health patients. Part of the association’s challenge, it says, is familiarizing the public with PMHs. Their qualifications and range of services they can offer puts them in a position to treat a very wide range of mental health conditions.