Psychiatric NP insight, please

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Hi fellow nurses,

I am an RN, half way through my M:NP program -- previously an emerg/icu RN. I am completing a paper on social determinants of health and meaningful depression prevention and treatment, all three levels.

I was hoping to connect with a generous psychiatric NP, who would have 5-10 minutes of time for a phone call, to add more depth to my paper with some clinical experience -- as my clinicals are with urgent care and family practice, my personal clinical insight is somewhat limited.

These are the kinds of things I would like frontline experience on:

In your opinion, what public health and general clinical practice strategies would strengthen community mental health and effectively reduce inciidence or severity of depression?

What are the main triggers or SDH do you personally see as significant contributors to depression?

What are your clinical experiences related to alternative therapies and efficacy of treating depression and other mental health complaints? Can you elaborate on any experiences you have in collaborating with native healers (a local preference), naturopaths, other alternative hcps', incorporating alternative treatments (nutrition, biogenetical hormones, etc.) into treatment, both positives and negatives?

Thanks in advance,

Julia

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Sorry about the auto-correct. To clarify, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

Julia

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Specializes in Outpatient Psychiatry.

I'm not a holistic clinician. I think that stuff has it's place, but I'm a cheeseburger guy so I couldn't care less about vitamins, crystals, feathers, and such.

Regarding science, there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest the PHQ-9 should be implemented in primary care visits. You can research the epidemiology of MDD to understand why. Since we don't really know what causes depression it's going to be hard to prevent it. Thereby screening for it for earlier treatment probably works better than trying to develop some preventive guidelines.

I chuckled a bit when I saw the nature of your assignment. This is one of the things that makes me a ashamed of nursing. We're assigning papers on the social determinants of health, a topic more suited to sociologists, while our colleagues in medicine are studying physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychopathology in effort to treat depression.

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Thanks. I am definitely using PHQ9. I share your feelings about my assignment. Sigh.

:)

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