Your Patients Want Integrative Care

There’s a quiet shift happening in our offices.

More and more patients are showing up asking about magnesium for anxiety (and already taking it). They're asking about gut health and inflammation. They’re curious about supplements, sleep routines, hormonal impacts, nutrition, and whether yoga really helps with resilience.

You've heard them: meds aren't working, or they're causing side effects. They're looking for something more. 
They’re tired. Frustrated. Still not sleeping. Still anxious. Still not themselves.

And they want to understand why.

This is the changing landscape of psychiatric care for advanced practice nurses.

Today’s patients aren’t asking us to abandon evidence-based treatment. They’re asking us to better understand what evidence is out there. This is where integrative psychiatry comes in. 

What is integrative psychiatric care?
At its core, integrative care combines the best of conventional tools—medications, labs, interventional psychiatry—with research-backed complementary and alternative approaches that support the whole person: mind, body, and nervous system. Did you know the American Psychiatric Association published and sells a textbook called Complementary and Integrative Treatments in Psychiatric Practice? 

It asks not just what’s the diagnosis (which we know is a bigger question than the DSM-5-TR can answer), but also:
What’s the root cause? What’s contributing to this? What might help, beyond the basics?

It’s a dialectic model that can say yes to both Prozac and the Mediterranean Diet, to lithium and omega-3s, to boundaries, breathwork, and mindful prescribing—all in the same plan of care.

This isn’t fringe. It’s not experimental. It’s thoughtful, emerging, and increasingly expected by patients who want collaborative, respectful care that looks at the bigger picture.

And this is where PMHNPs are uniquely equipped.
As psych NPs, we’re already trained to think with the biopsychosocial model in mind. We know healing isn’t linear—and that the right answer often includes both medication and “something else.”

Our patients are already bringing us their questions. When we’re prepared to respond with confidence, clinical safety, and an open mind, we create real trust—and better outcomes. 

Integrative care isn’t about changing everything you know. It’s about building on your solid foundation. It means evaluating supplements and protocols with the same critical thinking you bring to new medications. It means having more options when standard approaches don’t go far enough. It means supporting the nervous system, the physiology, and the person sitting in front of you, not purely the diagnosis in their record.

At The Integrative Psych NP, we’re here to make that learning process approachable and useful. You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need curiosity, good clinical instincts, and the right support to grow.

We’ll help you connect the dots—through practical education, training, and support—so you can bring integrative care into your work in a safe, evidence-based manner.

Your patients deserve care that reflects their complexity and capacity to heal.
And you deserve training that reflects yours.