aspiring42

Nick, I think you have missed the mark in focusing on the negative connotations of the diction in the post you are responding to. Mental health patients absolutely lie to get what they want, and look for ways to manipulate staff to serve their own desires. This is not only true in mental health but in education, child care, and medicine in general. I find it hard to believe that people, especially people needing inpatient mental health services, are not self-serving and manipulative in other English-speaking nations. Maybe you have chosen the right placements to where you have few challenging clients. In my scant ten years working in mental health, I would say that all of my patients have been challenging in one way or another, but each relationship has also been rewarding in some way. Also, without exception, from a six year old on the emotionally disturbed spectrum, to a 68 year old veteran dealing with substance abuse, every one of my clients has tried to get what they want by lieing at least once.

TLDR: In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Florida, can I reasonably expect to find a job as a PMHNP making $80000 annual salary? I am a man living in Birmingham, AL who is coming to nursing after becoming disillusioned with counseling. I went to school for a Master's in clinical mental health counseling, and loved my job working as an outpatient substance abuse therapist for teenage clients, for $30000 a year. I buckled down to try and earn my next level of licensure, which I was assured would bump me up to $35000, so that then I could pay $60-$100 a month for weekly supervision over the course of 1000 direct care hours (If I took 30 more hours of graduate level coursework in counseling, but up to 3000 hours without the added time and expense of extra schooling) and eventually earn $40-$45k as a LPC. Finally, If I worked my way up to executive director of a program, or switched to to management side [sic] and found a positiion as a QA director, I could possibly make as much as $70k, in 5-10 years, if a positions becomes available. I was working for a larger, non-profit agency, running an outpatient clinic by myself, with minimal supervision (sometimes my supervisor could meet with me via skype once a week, sometimes not). The hours were long, and I was commuting from an hour and some change away, daily. In any case, I got tired of doing the work of a psychologist for a waiter's pay with little prospect of a raise any time soon. After all, I want to start a family with my wife while I am still in my thirties. I saw my sister earn her associates in nursing, become an RN, and, within a year, get raise after raise, promotion after promotion in responsibility and privelege just by being good at her job, while I was busting my butt, and getting little more than my clients' and their probation officers' telling me they appreciated me. I'm working on pre-reqs to enter an accelerated master's in nursing program at UAB. When researching specialties, I read about a desperate need for PMHNP's in some places, and an oversaturation and scant jobs in others. I'd love to use the skills I have in psyche and be paid a decent wage for it. I know money isn't everything, blah, blah, blah, but when you don't have enough of it to start a family, when all you have ever wanted is to be a father, then money becomes very important. Plus, my sister is very happy,as a nurse, and our personalities, and mentalities are very similar. I do feel "the call" to help others by nursing. So my question is this: in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Florida, can I reasonably expect to find a job as a PMHNP making $80000 annual salary? It seems too good to be true. I started college in 2003, and between then and now, there has been a constant cry that we need more and better mental health care in this country, and that there is a increasing demand for mental health professionals to serve geriatric and veteran populations. Meanwhile, funding for mental health has diminished over and over, and facilities have been closed at an upsetting pace. With the way mental healthcare is funded in our country, I don't see hw it can make sense for a PMHNP to be paid as much or more than a licensed psychologist (according to some sources). When I worked in mental health, there was a set payscale for therapists of specific levels of experience and licensure, and no room for raises or salary negotiation, as that scale was set by how much the department of mental health would fund a mental health agency each fiscal year. Is mental health funding different in medical settings? Anyway, I am fascinated by the human body, and mind, and I want to use my talent to make a living by helping others. I'd be willing to go into any nursing specialty where the job outlook is good, and the payscale is at least $80k annually. Would PMHNP be a good fit, or am I more likely to meet my needs as a FNP, geriatric NP, or neonatal NP. Maybe in your experience, another specialty I haven't considered has better prospects. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Hey Zephyr, just to confirm, I beleive I worked at the facility to which you are applying. If I am right, they primarily work with clients on the autistic spetrum, but have a severely emotionally disturbed division as well. I was a tech and my clients saw the nurse in the morning for their meds, and if they were injured or restrained throughout the day. Otherwise, nurses would sit in on staffing meetings and provide insight into how allergies and chronic medical conditions could affect clients' abilities to meet their treatment goals. Otherwise, I have no idea how they filled up the rest of their day. The positions did seem to be more like school nursing to me, and the nurses did seem to sit in offices and always be working on paperwork in between administering medication from one morning to the next.