My name is Trey Brock and I am currently a firefighter paramedic and in nursing school as well. I have seen many people take their life as they did not have access to the help they need, but I have also saved many people simply from talking and listening to their story. I plan to attend a rn to msn psychiatric nurse practitioner program after I obtain my associates. I am looking for a mentor more or less about the psychiatric mental health field, starting your own practice, and anything and everything possible. I am always wanting to learn to better help my patients that I encounter! I want to open a practice potentially after I obtain my psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner geared around treating first responders with mental health issues whether it's job related or they had mental health disorders that are intensified by our line of work. I feel that the issue with mental health as a whole in America is we treat the symptoms of the disorders and it's very algorithmic in the way that pateints are treated. I feel that to truly help the patients we need to treat the underlying cause as well. Long story short I am looking for a mentor ship to ask advice, learn, and better myself as a whole and as a clinician. Is this something you would potentially be interested in?
Warm regards and I look forward to hearing from all of you!
Trey Brock Nremt-p
I'll be glad to help you out if I can accept private messages or something on here. I was a NREMT-P back in the day.
Very few people are opening their own practice. Credentialing with insurance companies and EMR requirements make that a burden along with overhead costs. You'll likely see telehealth continue to replace outpatient face to face psych visits.
Treating first responders is noble, but as you see the majority of them won't go in search of mental healthcare. It's a guarded population. There are people doing research in this field, however, and more needs to be done. CISD are becoming thought of as potentially harmful (which I agree with). Unfortunately, you'll need psychotherapeutic training beyond your MSN program to really "be" a therapist although you'll be credentialed to conduct and bill therapy. What most police/fire/EMS need are early therapy, and their roles preclude a lot of psych meds. Ironically, it's much easier to "do" therapy in private practice. There are lots of ways of becoming a therapist, but most patients want the quick fix of pills or combination of pills and talk. On top of that, the majority of "therapists" offer supportive counsel rather than evidenced based psychotherapies with little evidence supporting supportive counseling as beneficial. The "underlying cause" absolutely needs to be addressed, yet a lot of patients choose not to do anything to address boundaries, childhood trauma, etc. When you have the pleasure of treating kids with DMDD and various other childhood disorders (and taking on the intended role of inundating them with antiepileptic drugs and atypical antipsychotics) in the future you'll find yourself inviting the parents for treatment. Of course the kid is going to flip out in class when because that's what everyone is doing at home in the living room every night.
Mental health is actually not very algorithmic at all. In fact, it's somewhat too subjective and complicated by our system of diagnoses (and insurance coding). Take a case of bipolar for example. Poll a room of providers and you'll probably get major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, cyclothymia, bipolar I, bipolar II, schizoaffective d/o, ADHD, and many other possible diagnoses to that bipolar individual.
Psych is great. I encourage you to pursue it. Unfortunately, the majority of patients don't want to pull the root. They give it lip service, but they're usually content to mow the weed down (which pops back up days later) or sprinkle it with some type of chemical agent.
