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Psychiatric and mental health nursing
Psychiatric and mental health nursing is a specialized field within the nursing profession focused on the assessment, diagnosis, management, and treatment of various mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and substance abuse. This area of nursing has evolved significantly since the mid-20th century, reflecting advancements in understanding mental health and the development of more humane treatment approaches. Practitioners in this field often hold master's or doctoral degrees and may be certified to provide comprehensive care that includes counseling, patient assessments, and psychotherapy.
Mental health nurses play a vital role in developing individualized care plans, monitoring the efficacy of treatments, and adjusting medications as needed to enhance patient outcomes. They work closely with patients and their families, emphasizing the importance of a supportive network for effective long-term care. The field faces challenges including high turnover rates among staff and disparities in access to mental health services, particularly in underserved areas. Overall, psychiatric and mental health nursing aims to promote mental wellness and improve the quality of life for individuals facing mental health challenges, recognizing the intricate interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors in mental health.
Authored By: Dewey, Joseph, PhD 1 of 4
Published In: 2024 2 of 4
- Related Topics:Alzheimer's Disease;Biopsychosocial model;Bipolar disorder;Dementias;Depression;Eating Disorders;Group therapy;Insomnia;Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA);Mental health stigma;Panic attacks;Personality disorders;Post-traumatic stress disorder;Psychoanalysis;Schizophrenia;World Health Organization (WHO)
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- Related Articles:Comorbidity of Lifetime History of Abuse and Trauma With Opioid Use Disorder: Implications for Nursing Assessment and Care.;Harm Reduction as an Essential Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Skill.;Narrative Intervention for Long COVID (NICO): A Proof of Concept Pilot Study.;Research Priorities in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Funding Availability, Recently Published Work, and Future Directions for Advancing Our Science.;Working effectively with people who have received a diagnosis of personality disorder.
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Full Article
One of the most prominent subfields of nursing to emerge since the end of World War II is that of psychiatric and mental health nursing, which involves assessing, diagnosing, managing, and treating a wide array of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, substance use disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, and early-onset dementia. Following the development of psychoanalysis in the 1890s, the field of psychiatric health itself has expanded greatly as researchers and counselors began to study and treat mental disorders with increased rigor. In addition, cutting-edge studies gave nuance and depth to what had largely been stereotypes and simplifications of individuals suffering from various mental disorders. Since 1950, psychiatric research has largely redefined the nature of mental disorders and has classified dozens of mental conditions that previously had not been recognized as clinical conditions.
Psychiatric and mental health nurses help support individuals with mental illness as well as their families. In addition, these nurses can be part of group counseling programs, and they often can work within communities to promote mental health awareness. Unlike traditional nurses who assist in hospitals and clinics to treat physical trauma and illness that can show improvements relatively quickly, psychiatric and mental health nurses help to manage and treat mental illnesses, many of which require long-term care or even lifetime management. That puts particular stress on the profession, leading to high turnover rates. The need for certified psychiatric and mental health nurses far exceeds the number of qualified and available nurses.
Background
The emergence of the psychiatric and mental health nursing field reflects a revolution in treating mental health disorders. For centuries, mental disorders were not considered illnesses. Doctors (and families, for that matter) rarely saw effective treatment as an option—people with severe mental illness were typically housed apart from the community in specially designed hospitals or care programs. Within this medical paradigm, the job of a nurse was largely to administer medicine to sedate patients as a way to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. By the mid-nineteenth century, conditions in such hospitals had degraded to the point that radical reform of such facilities emerged as a major social activism campaign in both the United States and Europe.
When mental illness began to be more extensively researched in the mid-1950s, the medical field began to recognize how many more people were suffering from mental disorders than those with the most severe cases who had been placed into special institutionalized facilities. In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) described mental health as a significant health problem worldwide, representing the second biggest cause contributing to long-term disability. The WHO reported that over 1 billion people in the world live with some type of mental health disorder. Common mental health problems include depression, alcohol and drug addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorders, personality disorders, and a variety of anxieties and stress-related illnesses that can be manifested in such symptoms as insomnia, mood swings, panic attacks, low self-esteem, poor diet, social isolation, and physical manifestations such as headaches and chronic pain. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimated that 59.3 million adults (or 23.1 percent of the adult population) in the United States lived with a mental illness in 2022.
This number may, in fact, be lower than the total number of adults suffering from mental illness. The WHO estimated in 2017 that even in high-income countries, only about one-third of people with depression were receiving formal mental health care treatment. Given the stigma associated with mental health, many people resist seeking help and instead try to handle the symptoms on their own. In addition, facilities equipped to help and doctors and nurses trained in the field are not readily accessible, particularly in rural areas, and long-term treatment can be difficult to secure. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) reported that as of December 2, 2025, 137 million people in the United States lived in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area. Insurance carriers do not always cover the high costs of long-term mental health treatment. The Mental Health Parity Act (also called the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008) requires that insurers not provide less favorable terms for mental health services than for physical health services if they do provide mental health coverage, but the law does not mandate that they provide such coverage in the first place. All of these factors contribute to a situation in which many of those who most need mental health services are not receiving them. Since 2022, people in the United States have been able to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at any time by call, text, or chat for immediate mental health crisis support.
Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Today
Psychiatric and mental health nursing is considered an advanced specialty, and in contrast to most registered nurses, practitioners often have master’s or doctoral degrees. Certification for registered nurses and mental health nurses is offered by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Mental health nursing involves a broad range of treatment, termed biopsychosocial—as the word indicates, mental health nursing draws on biology, psychology, and sociology. Nurses who enter the mental health care field function in a number of interrelated capacities within clinical treatment. Psychiatric mental health advanced practice registered nurses provide primary care services in the form of counseling, patient assessments, and regular psychotherapy sessions, as well as specialized psychiatric-mental health services. In directing this therapy regimen, psychiatric and mental health nurses develop a plan of care and evaluate it for its effectiveness in addressing the patient’s symptoms.
Depending on their APRN (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse) role and state law, advanced mental health nurses, those with master’s or doctoral degrees, can also prescribe psychiatric medications to enhance the chances of success. Nurses carefully observe the effect of such medications over the term of patient care and can adjust dosages or prescribe different medications according to the individual patient’s progress or side effects. Mental health nurses also work with the families of patients and encourage that network of support as crucial to long-term treatment success.
The psychiatric and mental health care nurse recognizes the levels of complexity that create mental health disorders and, thus, works with a patient’s body and mind as well as with the larger community within which that patient lives to help that patient live the most productive and rewarding life possible. A 2025 APNA workforce report emphasized that expanding the psychiatric-mental health nursing workforce is essential to improving access to mental health care in the United States.
Bibliography
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “About Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing.” American Psychiatric Nurses Association, www.apna.org/about-psychiatric-nursing/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “APNA Position: Psychiatric-Mental Health Advanced Practice Nurses.” APNA, www.apna.org/pmh-aprns-position-statement. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “2025 State of the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing Workforce.” APNA, www.apna.org/news/2025-state-of-the-psychiatric-mental-health-nursing-workforce. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Curtis, Catherine, and Audra Baker. Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Success. 2nd ed., Davis, 2013.
Health Resources and Services Administration. State of the Behavioral Health Workforce, 2025, Dec. 2025, bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bureau-health-workforce/data-research/Behavioral-Health-Workforce-Brief-2025.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Hogan, Maryann, et al. Mental Health Nursing. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2012.
National Institute of Mental Health. “Mental Illness.” NIMH, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. 988 Lifeline. 988lifeline.org. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
“Over a Billion People Living with Mental Health Conditions – Services Require Urgent Scale-Up.” WHO, 2 Sept. 2025, https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up. Accessed 1 Apr. 2026.
Reynolds, William, and Daphne Cormack. “Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing: Theory and Practice.” Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, edited by William Reynolds, Springer, 1990, pp. 3–22.
“State of the U.S. Health Care Workforce, 2024.” HRSA, Nov. 2024, bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bureau-health-workforce/state-of-the-health-workforce-report-2024.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Townsend, Mary C. Essentials of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Concepts of Care in Evidence-Based Practice. 6th ed., Davis, 2013.
Townsend, Mary C. Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Concepts of Care in Evidence-Based Practice. 8th ed., Davis, 2014.
Varcarolis, Elizabeth M. Essentials of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. 2nd ed., Saunders, 2014.
World Health Organization. World Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All. 16 June 2022, www.who.int/teams/mental-health-and-substance-use/world-mental-health-report. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Womble, Donna. Introductory Mental Health Nursing. 3rd ed., LWW, 2015.
Full Article
One of the most prominent subfields of nursing to emerge since the end of World War II is that of psychiatric and mental health nursing, which involves assessing, diagnosing, managing, and treating a wide array of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, substance use disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, and early-onset dementia. Following the development of psychoanalysis in the 1890s, the field of psychiatric health itself has expanded greatly as researchers and counselors began to study and treat mental disorders with increased rigor. In addition, cutting-edge studies gave nuance and depth to what had largely been stereotypes and simplifications of individuals suffering from various mental disorders. Since 1950, psychiatric research has largely redefined the nature of mental disorders and has classified dozens of mental conditions that previously had not been recognized as clinical conditions.
Psychiatric and mental health nurses help support individuals with mental illness as well as their families. In addition, these nurses can be part of group counseling programs, and they often can work within communities to promote mental health awareness. Unlike traditional nurses who assist in hospitals and clinics to treat physical trauma and illness that can show improvements relatively quickly, psychiatric and mental health nurses help to manage and treat mental illnesses, many of which require long-term care or even lifetime management. That puts particular stress on the profession, leading to high turnover rates. The need for certified psychiatric and mental health nurses far exceeds the number of qualified and available nurses.
Background
The emergence of the psychiatric and mental health nursing field reflects a revolution in treating mental health disorders. For centuries, mental disorders were not considered illnesses. Doctors (and families, for that matter) rarely saw effective treatment as an option—people with severe mental illness were typically housed apart from the community in specially designed hospitals or care programs. Within this medical paradigm, the job of a nurse was largely to administer medicine to sedate patients as a way to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. By the mid-nineteenth century, conditions in such hospitals had degraded to the point that radical reform of such facilities emerged as a major social activism campaign in both the United States and Europe.
When mental illness began to be more extensively researched in the mid-1950s, the medical field began to recognize how many more people were suffering from mental disorders than those with the most severe cases who had been placed into special institutionalized facilities. In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) described mental health as a significant health problem worldwide, representing the second biggest cause contributing to long-term disability. The WHO reported that over 1 billion people in the world live with some type of mental health disorder. Common mental health problems include depression, alcohol and drug addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorders, personality disorders, and a variety of anxieties and stress-related illnesses that can be manifested in such symptoms as insomnia, mood swings, panic attacks, low self-esteem, poor diet, social isolation, and physical manifestations such as headaches and chronic pain. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimated that 59.3 million adults (or 23.1 percent of the adult population) in the United States lived with a mental illness in 2022.
This number may, in fact, be lower than the total number of adults suffering from mental illness. The WHO estimated in 2017 that even in high-income countries, only about one-third of people with depression were receiving formal mental health care treatment. Given the stigma associated with mental health, many people resist seeking help and instead try to handle the symptoms on their own. In addition, facilities equipped to help and doctors and nurses trained in the field are not readily accessible, particularly in rural areas, and long-term treatment can be difficult to secure. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) reported that as of December 2, 2025, 137 million people in the United States lived in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area. Insurance carriers do not always cover the high costs of long-term mental health treatment. The Mental Health Parity Act (also called the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008) requires that insurers not provide less favorable terms for mental health services than for physical health services if they do provide mental health coverage, but the law does not mandate that they provide such coverage in the first place. All of these factors contribute to a situation in which many of those who most need mental health services are not receiving them. Since 2022, people in the United States have been able to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at any time by call, text, or chat for immediate mental health crisis support.
Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Today
Psychiatric and mental health nursing is considered an advanced specialty, and in contrast to most registered nurses, practitioners often have master’s or doctoral degrees. Certification for registered nurses and mental health nurses is offered by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Mental health nursing involves a broad range of treatment, termed biopsychosocial—as the word indicates, mental health nursing draws on biology, psychology, and sociology. Nurses who enter the mental health care field function in a number of interrelated capacities within clinical treatment. Psychiatric mental health advanced practice registered nurses provide primary care services in the form of counseling, patient assessments, and regular psychotherapy sessions, as well as specialized psychiatric-mental health services. In directing this therapy regimen, psychiatric and mental health nurses develop a plan of care and evaluate it for its effectiveness in addressing the patient’s symptoms.
Depending on their APRN (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse) role and state law, advanced mental health nurses, those with master’s or doctoral degrees, can also prescribe psychiatric medications to enhance the chances of success. Nurses carefully observe the effect of such medications over the term of patient care and can adjust dosages or prescribe different medications according to the individual patient’s progress or side effects. Mental health nurses also work with the families of patients and encourage that network of support as crucial to long-term treatment success.
The psychiatric and mental health care nurse recognizes the levels of complexity that create mental health disorders and, thus, works with a patient’s body and mind as well as with the larger community within which that patient lives to help that patient live the most productive and rewarding life possible. A 2025 APNA workforce report emphasized that expanding the psychiatric-mental health nursing workforce is essential to improving access to mental health care in the United States.
Bibliography
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “About Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing.” American Psychiatric Nurses Association, www.apna.org/about-psychiatric-nursing/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “APNA Position: Psychiatric-Mental Health Advanced Practice Nurses.” APNA, www.apna.org/pmh-aprns-position-statement. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
American Psychiatric Nurses Association. “2025 State of the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing Workforce.” APNA, www.apna.org/news/2025-state-of-the-psychiatric-mental-health-nursing-workforce. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Curtis, Catherine, and Audra Baker. Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Success. 2nd ed., Davis, 2013.
Health Resources and Services Administration. State of the Behavioral Health Workforce, 2025, Dec. 2025, bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bureau-health-workforce/data-research/Behavioral-Health-Workforce-Brief-2025.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Hogan, Maryann, et al. Mental Health Nursing. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2012.
National Institute of Mental Health. “Mental Illness.” NIMH, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. 988 Lifeline. 988lifeline.org. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
“Over a Billion People Living with Mental Health Conditions – Services Require Urgent Scale-Up.” WHO, 2 Sept. 2025, https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up. Accessed 1 Apr. 2026.
Reynolds, William, and Daphne Cormack. “Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing: Theory and Practice.” Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, edited by William Reynolds, Springer, 1990, pp. 3–22.
“State of the U.S. Health Care Workforce, 2024.” HRSA, Nov. 2024, bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bureau-health-workforce/state-of-the-health-workforce-report-2024.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Townsend, Mary C. Essentials of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Concepts of Care in Evidence-Based Practice. 6th ed., Davis, 2013.
Townsend, Mary C. Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing: Concepts of Care in Evidence-Based Practice. 8th ed., Davis, 2014.
Varcarolis, Elizabeth M. Essentials of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. 2nd ed., Saunders, 2014.
World Health Organization. World Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All. 16 June 2022, www.who.int/teams/mental-health-and-substance-use/world-mental-health-report. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
Womble, Donna. Introductory Mental Health Nursing. 3rd ed., LWW, 2015.
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