Skills to Become a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (2024)

Become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) and you can help address the nation’s growing mental health crisis. The need is real: the country lacks over 8,000 mental health practitioners, as shown by recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly half the population lives in an underserved region.

Mental health nurse practitioners change lives by providing a broad range of mental health services, diagnosing conditions, developing treatment plans, and prescribing medications. They enjoy a high degree of autonomy in most clinical settings (regulations vary from state to state). And they earn high incomes: according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), full-time PMHNPs earned a median total income, including base salary, bonuses, and incentive payments, of $121,610 in 2022.

Advanced nursing skills are critical to PMHNP work. Nurses must develop sophisticated clinical skills to pass the PMHNP-BC exam and earn certification. The profession also favors those with particular soft skills and character traits, as discussed below. To acquire the clinical skills, consider Yale School of Nursing’s online Master of Science in Nursing Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner specialty (PMHNP).

Key soft skills for PMHNPs

The skills and traits listed below aren’t mandatory for becoming an effective PMHNP, but they certainly help. If you recognize yourself in the descriptions below, you may be a good fit for a career in psychiatric nursing practice.

Ambition

PMHNPs are advanced practice nurses with subject expertise and highly developed skills. The clinical skills they need require time to develop; that’s why YSN’s online PMHNP program takes three years to complete. At the culmination of their studies, these professionals must pass the PMHNP-BC exam to earn certification.

Becoming a PMHNP can be challenging, and the process requires determination and commitment. The rewards are correspondingly substantial. 160 million Americans live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas; as a PMHNP, you can help fill the treatment gap for patients managing depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, substance abuse disorder, and other conditions.

Critical thinking

Whether they are diagnosing a patient, deciding what medication to prescribe, or performing counseling services, PMHNPs need critical thinking skills. There is no routine day in the office for PMHNPs—each patient is different and demands a unique clinical approach. PMHNPs must analyze patient information, weigh possible diagnoses against presenting symptoms, and think ahead when considering different plans of care. All require objective analysis and methodical decision-making: or, to put it more briefly, critical thinking.

Empathy

Empathy, according to a study in the journal Healthcare, is “the ability to understand the personal experience of the patient without bonding with them.” Mental health care necessitates close work with people whose behavior can be erratic and concerning. According to the same study, “health professionals with high levels of empathy operate more efficiently as to the fulfillment of their role in eliciting therapeutic change.”

The stigma associated with acknowledging mental health issues and seeking treatment further intensifies the need for empathy. Among Americans with clinical-level mental illness, 45 percent do not seek treatment. PMHNPs must operate empathetically to reach patients hesitant to open up about their struggles. An empathic psychiatric nurse practitioner can help patients feel welcome and vindicated, delivering mental health care to people who need it.

Open-mindedness

Unfortunately, access to mental health care varies among populations. According to the American Psychiatric Association, “Racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities often suffer from poor mental health outcomes” for reasons that include the “inaccessibility of high-quality mental health care services.” Geography and economics contribute to these disparities, but so too do biases among some mental health care providers.

The YSN PMHNP curriculum trains nurses to identify and overcome bias, situating equitable diagnosis and treatment among its primary objectives. The program promotes “an expansive view of health and believes that access to high-quality patient‐centered health care is a social right, not a privilege.” The program is designed to help meet the mental health needs of people from diverse and special populations—including transgender, LGBTQIA, geriatric, and pediatric—and individuals with disabilities and people living in rural areas.

Organization and time management

Independence can be a double-edged sword for PMHNPs. On the one hand, it gives them free rein to help patients without waiting on physicians for everything. All that responsibility comes at a cost. The average PMHNP sees 15 patients a day. Add administrative responsibilities to the clinical work and it becomes clear this job demands a great deal of personal organization and time management skills.

Learn PMHNP clinical skills at YSN

Having the right soft skills is just one part of becoming a PMHNP. Advanced clinical knowledge in areas such as pathophysiology and pharmacology forms the backbone of psychiatric nursing practice. Nurses in YSN’s PMHNP program learn these skills by completing the three-year psychiatric nursing curriculum. In clinical experiences during the second and third years of the program, students put their skills into practice under the supervision of Yale-vetted preceptors at clinical placements near where they live, arranged by YSN’s placement team.

YSN’s faculty understand the technical and practical skills necessary to succeed in mental health nursing because they are active practitioners. They bring their experience out of the clinic and into the classroom, where they train the next generation of PMHNPs who will close the gap in mental health care and deliver their services to populations who need them most.

PMHNPs develop a range of skills at YSN, turning them into thoughtful practitioners capable of treating almost any mental health problem they encounter. To begin their journey toward advanced practice nursing, students only need a ready mind and desire to do good.