History of Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing
- Late 19th Century: Reform movements for mental asylums lead to the beginning of the psychiatric-mental health nurse role
- 1882: First training school for nurses in the psychiatric setting established by Edward Cowles at McLean Asylum in Massachusetts
- 1913: Psychiatric nursing educational program is organized by nurses at Johns Hopkins University
- Post WWI: National League for Nursing Education adds nursing in nervous and mental diseases to curriculum guides
- 1920: First psychiatric nursing textbook, Nursing Mental Disease, is written by Harriet Bailey and published
- 1944: American Psychiatric Association commissions Laura Fitzsimmons to evaluate psychiatric nursing educational programs
- 1946: National Mental Health Act names psychiatric nursing as one of the 4 core mental health disciplines and includes funding to develop advanced educational programs for mental health nursing
- 1950s: Process of deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care begins
- 1952: Hildegard Peplau publishes Interpersonal Relations in Nursing
- 1954: Hildegard Peplau establishes the first psychiatric nursing graduate program at Rutgers University
- 1963: Community Mental Health Centers Act helps expand PMH-CNS practice into community and ambulatory care settings
- 1963: First psychiatric-mental health nursing research journals are published
- 1965: PMH-RN practice expands over next two decades due to the establishment of Medicare & Medicaid
- 1973: American Nurses Association (ANA) publishes first issue of Standards of Psychiatric Nursing Practice and begins to certify PMH-RNs
- 1974: First ANCC Psychiatric-Mental Health Clinical Nurse Specialist Exam is offered
- 1986: American Psychiatric Nurses Association is founded
- 1990s: Decade of the brain, recovery-oriented systems begin to gain traction
- 2000: First ANCC Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Exam is offered
- 2003: National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties releases the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Competencies
- 2007: ANCC Logical Job Analysis of PMH-CNS and PMH-NP roles
- 2008: Consensus Model for APRN Regulation – Licensure, Accreditation, Certification, and Education
- 2010: Institute of Medicine releases the Future of Nursing: Leading Change to Advance Health Report
- 2014: Second edition of Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing: Scope & Standards of Practice is published
- 2017: ANCC administers the final PMH-CNS certification exam. Previously certified PMH-CNSs continue to practice
Adapted from Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing: Scope & Standards of Practice
