A Reflection from The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook
There is a question worth asking before almost every psychiatric intervention:
What am I trying to change, and why?
A symptom may be uncomfortable. A behavior may concern the team. A patient may be making choices we would not make.
However, discomfort alone is not always pathology. Difference is not always dysfunction. And our desire for change is not automatically the patient’s goal.
Precision requires us to distinguish between what is clinically harmful, what is simply unfamiliar, and what matters most to the person sitting in front of us. Presence requires us to listen before deciding. Power requires us to remember that the goal of psychiatric care is not to make people easier to manage.
It is to help people suffer less, function more fully, exercise greater agency, and build lives that hold meaning for them.
Before changing the treatment, the behavior, or the person, ask:
Whose goal is this?
That question can change everything. More to come.
The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook: Healing with Precision, Presence, and Power
If these reflections resonate with your experience in practice, the full handbook explores these themes in depth.
The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook is now available wherever books are distributed.
You’re Invited: Virtual Book Event
Join us as we celebrate The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook and the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners whose work, wisdom, and presence inspired it.
September 30, 2026
8:00–9:30 PM (ET)
Get your ticket by clicking here
We hope you’ll join us for an evening of reflection, conversation, and celebration of the extraordinary work of Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners.
Reserve your spot here.