New to the Nursing Field

[SpiritBender]

Good night everyone I am seriously considering becoming an Mental Health RN however as I have now learned there are several ways to go about doing that.

When i will apply I will have a BA & MA in Psychology would it be better for me to go the BSN route or the ASN route? I have not taken the science pre-reqs yet but once that is done i don't know which option would be better for me.

Are ASN RNs looked down on in the field??

Are there any certain criteria once should look for when picking nursing schools? So far i have been looking at NCLEX-RN passing rates.

Are there any schools in the West LA area that people recommend or absolutely hate? I am looking at:

Mount Saint Mary's College

Cal State LA

Biola University

LA College of Nursing and Allied Health

Los Angeles City College

Santa Monica College

I want to ultimately do Mental Health nursing would i need to have a specialized certificate for that or just become an RN then apply to Behavioral Health Units that need nurses?

Sorry for the barrage of questions the more i look into this the more my passion is growing except for O Chem

[SpiritBender]

anybody?

[Clovery]

I would call around to potential nursing schools and inquire about how much of your psych coursework would transfer. I have a bachelor of liberal arts in biology/psychology and have found it to be utterly useless (in terms of earning credits) for my nursing degree. Part of the problem was that my college was in a different state and region from the school I go to now. But the course titles were an issue as well. For example I had "statistics for the behavioral sciences" and that would not transfer as the "intro to statistics" pre-req for an ASN degree

Also, I would talk to nurses who are currently working in mental health and ask them what kind of education their job requires. I believe there is a specialty forum here for psychiatric nursing. I would guess that an ASN plus your MA in psychology would be enough for a position, but I really don't know. Some facilities do require a BSN for all their RNs.

For myself, I decided to go the ASN route, mostly to save money. My community college has partnerships with local colleges and universities, so I know all my work will transfer towards a BSN. Also, it's important to me that I start working as a nurse, then hopefully my job might provide tuition assistance and I could probably do most of the BSN coursework online.

Good luck to you, hopefully you find someone who can better answer your questions :)