Why More People Are Seeking an Integrative Approach to Mental Health
If you’ve been practicing for a few years, you may have noticed a shift in some of the things patients want to talk about.
People are asking about supplements, nutrition, mindfulness, gut health, trauma, and hormone balance. They’re wondering how to improve their sleep without medication. They’re talking about yoga, acupuncture, breathwork, and energy levels. They're bringing lab results they ordered on their own or with a naturopath. They’re avidly consuming books, podcasts, and youtube videos targeted towards self help, and have often tried many interventions before walking into your office.
For many NPs, this shift is exciting but overwhelming. It reflects a growing desire for mental health care that is more personalized to the patient. But it also asks us, as clinicians, to build a new skill set that includes not just what medications to prescribe, but also how to think through what else may be contributing to suffering.
This is where an integrative approach to mental health care feels very relevant. It’s an approach that our patients are already asking for.
A System That Often Falls Short
The conventional psychiatric model has provided life-changing interventions for many people.
But we also know that there isn’t always time or opportunity in a 20-30 minute medication management appointment to explore the relationship between trauma and inflammation, or between blood sugar and panic attacks. It doesn’t always leave time to ask about sleep hygiene, or to screen for nutrient deficiencies, or to talk about the deeper causes of burnout.
So patients have started asking different questions and looking elsewhere for answers.
What Patients Are Hoping For
Most patients aren’t looking to abandon medication or reject conventional psychiatric care. In fact, many are already on medications when they start exploring other options. What they’re looking for is something more collaborative and in their words, “more holistic”.
In our experience, patients are seeking:
Care that sees more than clusters of symptoms
Shared decision-making that goes beyond increasing or switching medications
PMHNPs who are open to hearing what they’re already trying
Recommendations that are aligned with best practices and their preferences
They want to feel like an active participant in their healing, not a passive recipient of treatment.
What This Means for PMHNPs
As mental health providers, we’re in a unique position to meet this moment. We know how to assess, how to prescribe, how to monitor risk — and many of us also bring curiosity, humility, and a willingness to grow.
But most of us didn’t get formal training in how to think through nutrition, stress physiology, inflammation, or supplements. We weren’t taught how to evaluate non-pharmaceutical interventions, or how to talk to patients about what they’re using on their own.
This is where a foundational training in integrative psychiatric care shines.
Final Thoughts
Our patients’ growing interest in integrative mental health isn’t a rejection of conventional care. It’s a reflection of something many people are finally starting to name: that mental health is deeply connected to the rest of the body, to lifestyle, to environment, and to story.
As PMHNPs, we’re well positioned to meet this shift through our whole-person training as Registered Nurses, years of bedside experience, and graduate level training in psychiatry.
If you’re ready to start learning how to bring integrative tools into your psychiatric practice in a responsible, evidence-based way, we’d love to support you.
Our Intro to Integrative Psychiatry for PMHNPs course was designed for exactly this purpose: to provide you with the introduction to integrative assessment, intervention, and treatment evaluation that you can’t get anywhere else.
