Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Degree

A Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) is a registered nurse (RN) with advanced education who specializes in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health conditions.  PMHNPs play an essential role in increasing access to mental health care, especially in underserved areas and are licensed to provide mental health care to individuals of all ages.

PMHNPs have the authority to:

• Assess mental health: They conduct thorough evaluations to diagnose conditions like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and others.
• Provide psychotherapy: PMHNPs can offer various forms of therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), to help manage mental health symptoms.
• Prescribe medications: They can prescribe psychiatric medications, including antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics, to help treat mental health disorders.
• Collaborate with other healthcare providers: They often work alongside other mental health professionals, like psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists, to ensure comprehensive care.

The West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) program prepares students for advanced practice roles in the field of psychiatric and mental health nursing. Specifically, it equips them with the knowledge and skills necessary to practice in. Graduates are trained to work in various settings, including outpatient clinics, inpatient psychiatric units, community health centers, hospitals, and private practices.

This program offers a comprehensive foundation in both the clinical and therapeutic aspects of psychiatric care, empowering students to become leaders in the field of mental health nursing.

Successful graduates are eligible to sit for the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Exam. This program is available in an online format with clinical experiences in Texas and Oklahoma. Clinical experiences in other states require approval from the program director.

Upon successful completion of the M.S.N programs, graduates will be prepared to:

• Knowledge for Nursing Practice encompasses the integration, translation, and application of disciplinary nursing knowledge and ways of knowing, as well as knowledge from other disciplines, including a foundation in liberal arts and natural and social sciences.
• Person-Centered Care focuses on the individual within multiple complicated contexts, including family and/or important others. Person-centered care is holistic, individualized, just, respectful, compassionate, coordinated, evidence-based, and developmentally appropriate.
• Population Health spans the healthcare delivery continuum from prevention to disease management of populations and describes collaborative activities with affected communities, public health, industry, academia, health care, local government entities, and others for the improvement of equitable population health outcomes.
• Scholarship for Nursing Practice involves the generation, synthesis, translation, application, and dissemination of nursing knowledge to improve health and transform health care.
• Quality and Safety, as core values of nursing practice, involves enhancing quality and minimizing risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance.
• Interprofessional Partnerships involves intentional collaboration across professions and with care team members, patients, families, communities, and other stakeholders to optimize care, enhance the healthcare experience, and strengthen outcomes.
• Systems-Based Practice prepares nurses to lead within complex systems of health care. Nurses must effectively coordinate resources to provide safe, quality, equitable care to diverse populations.
• Informatics and Healthcare Technologies are used to provide safe, high-quality care, gather data, form information to drive decision making, and support professionals as they expand knowledge and wisdom for practice.
• Professionalism involves cultivating a sustainable professional nursing identity, perspective, accountability, and comportment that reflects nursing’s characteristics and values.
• Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development includes activities and self-reflection that foster personal health, resilience, and well-being, lifelong learning, and support the acquisition of nursing expertise and assertion of leadership.

Program Eligibility Checklist:

• Applicants must hold an unencumbered RN nursing license in the U.S.
• The applicant must have a cumulative GPA for the last 60 hours of college credit of at least a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Failure in any nursing coursework will be taken into consideration. A Nursing GPA will also be calculated and taken into consideration. If you do not have the minimum GPA, please contact the Nursing Department for additional options for consideration.

Application Checklist:

1. Apply to Graduate School
   1. provide one official copy of all transcripts to the Graduate School (WTAMU graduates are excluded).
2. Apply to Graduate Nursing Program Application (pdf)
   1. Include a resume.
   2. Provide the School of Nursing with contact information for two (non-academic) clinical supervisory references.
   3. Submit a written goal statement that will be evaluated based on:
      • Clear focus related to a goal statement
      • Supportive detail regarding the goal statement
      • Organization of goal statement (clear introduction, body and conclusion)
      • Clarity, grammar, and punctuation
      • Goal statement is typed with a word count of between 500-750 words.

Application Deadlines:

• The application deadline for the PMHNP specialization is March 1 for a fall admission start and September 1 for spring admission start.

PMHNP Average Wages:

• $100,000-115,000 - Texas Panhandle
• $110,000-125,000- State of Texas 

Visit the Department of Labor Statistics Health Care Industry page for more information.

• Visit the WT Scholarships page for more details.
• Visit the WT Cost Calculator to estimate costs for this program.