LAUSR

Our current time is undoubtedly an occasion “piled high with difficulty.” The COVID-19 pandemic presents significant new challenges to mental wellness while also shining a light on long-standing health disparities for minority populations. Rising rates of death from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related health problems, the so-called “deaths of despair” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.), are brought into laser focus in the context of COVID19, with the real possibility that death rates from these causes will continue to rise. These circumstances constitute a crisis for mental health and care delivery. It is imperative for us to use our abilities to think and act anew in order to improve access to care. While we could easily remain frozen in place, shaking our heads at clear health disparities and bemoaning lack of access, we are psychiatric-mental health (PMH) nurses who instead rise to the occasion, seeing opportunities before us and acting on them. PMH nurses are change agents with both the desire and the professional competencies to identify needs and act in response. Our Scope and Standards of Practice1 (American Nurses Association [ANA], American Psychiatric Nurses Association [APNA], & International Society of Psychiatric Nursing [ISPN], 2014) define our role and compel us to address mental health care inequities. They direct our efforts to improve access to personcentered care, especially in challenging times. They encourage us to identify outcomes based on a holistic understanding of a person’s needs and circumstances, the current evidence, and opportunities for meeting needs within the larger picture of the current environment. They direct us to assist “the healthcare consumer and family in identifying and securing appropriate and available services to address health-related needs” (Standard 15: Resource Utilization; ANA, APNA, & ISPN, 2014, p. 82). When those services do not exist, PMH nurses create them. Mary Moller, DNP, ARNP, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, CPRP, FAAN, the 2018 APNA Psychiatric Nurse of the Year, could speak for us all when she says, The underlying theme of all my activities is to improve the access to and care of individuals with mental illnesses and their family members. When in doubt, I have relied on my nursing skills to pull me through and do what was best for the patient, not what was right for the system. (APNA, 2018)