Fam Syst Health. 2025 Sep;43(3):550-553. doi: 10.1037/fsh0000997.
ABSTRACT
In this article, the authors assert that a potential solution to mitigate the mental health care workforce shortage is to embed psychiatric nurses in primary care. Nurse practitioners (NPs) are nurses who have advanced education (master’s or doctoral degree) and advanced clinical training to diagnose and treat illness, manage chronic disease, and contribute to population health. Although there are not yet large-scale studies of psychiatric NP integration in primary care, emerging evidence suggests that such models can improve mental health care referrals, increase uptake of mental health referrals, decrease child behavioral symptoms, and decrease repeat primary care visits for unmet behavioral health needs. The ongoing shortage of specialty mental health care providers has created a significant opportunity for physician-nurse collaborative models of care to fill this gap. An innovative and practical solution to the nation’s child mental health crisis is expanding, incentivizing, and sustaining the role of psychiatric NPs in pediatric primary care models. Such models may yield distinct health benefits in underserved and low-resource communities with mental health provider shortages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
PMID:41264502 | DOI:10.1037/fsh0000997
