The expertise, creativity, and camaraderie of psychiatric-mental health nurses were on display during the 2022 annual ISPN conference, held virtually March 16–19. From the opening keynote address by Dr. Michael Terry on recovery of wonder and the praxis of play to the closing talk by Dr. Daniel Pesut on future challenges in our specialty, conference attendees were provided rich food for thought. A video of the awesome aurora borealis, shown during the opening keynote, set the stage for 3 days of considering visionary new perspectives.
Speaker Kathy Delaney depicted the top challenges to improving mental health care, suggesting ways to optimize the large psychiatric nursing workforce (109,000 RNs and 26,000 Advanced Practice Psychiatric RNs in the USA). Many care models were suggested, with special focus on services for traumatized children, homeless individuals, older adults, and persons who were formerly incarcerated. Examples of successful innovations included telemental health care delivery, Friday drop-in clinics for medication refills, RN providers located in shelters, and nurse practitioner follow-up of patients after psychiatric hospitalization. Dr. Delaney emphasized that insufficient research is being done on many groups (e.g., juvenile sex offenders) and that we have insufficient knowledge about the reluctance of some groups (e.g., Latinos) to enter and stay in mental health care. She urged more attention to what providers are doing to improve engagement in mental health services.
The need for integrated care was noted throughout the conference, and highlighted during a session chaired by Dr. Beth Bonham, which included a case presentation of a client with severe bipolar disorder and concomitant obesity, kidney disease, epilepsy, and newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis. Given the high prevalence of chronic physical disease in our patients with psychiatric conditions, the one-dimensional inadequacy of the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, Citation2013) was noted. The suffering of these patients must be addressed by more holistic care.
The 2022 Diversity and Equity address, delivered by Bridgette Brawner, challenged the audience to alter their thinking about individual behavior disorders and look at the dilapidated neighborhoods in which many minority youth are living. She conducts community ethnographic research that produces new insights about the influences of culture and limited resources on emotions of anger and sadness. Accompanying a photograph of a street full of potholes, she used a quotation from one of her research participants who asked, “What do they really think about me if my street can stay like this for months?”
Collaboration with other providers in the mental health team was an emphasis during several presentations. Dr. Stephanie Wynn described an excellent interprofessional training project in which psychiatric nursing students and social work students learned efficacious collaboration during virtual simulations, “seeing” standardized patients and then debriefing with faculty observers.
I have provided only a glimpse of this stimulating conference. Other topics included returning psychiatric nursing to its psychotherapy roots, doll therapy in acute care geriatric psychiatry, pediatric psychopharmacology, and greater attention to sexual and gender minority populations (including using simulations to prepare students for respectful and empathic care). I will be soliciting manuscripts from several of the ISPN presenters, so watch for articles in future issues. If your imagination has been sparked by any of these topics, or if you have ongoing work to report, I welcome your submissions.
References
- American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Association.