Meet Mitchell
I did not realize it during my upbringing but my whole life has geared me to be a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Like many minority and immigrant cultures, mental health is not valued enough in my culture. Growing up, I was surrounded by environments and people with poor mental health. My closest friends would come to me for support, which instilled in me a strong desire to help them. Many times, mental health is labeled as a “Western weakness”. Fortunately, most of my peers and I knew this was not the case. Unfortunately, some of my peers believed they truly were weak. I want to work towards dispelling that misconception. The event that got me thinking that I may have a knack for mental health occurred in 2016 during my senior year of high school. My high school had this program where people from each class were nominated by their class to the “Natural Helpers Program” every year. Students would anonymously nominate 1 person they felt they could turn to for emotional support. The 2 names that came up the most per class would attend a retreat focusing on developing mental health support techniques. I was honored to be chosen. Later on in undergrad when I pursued my nursing degree, I found that the part of care I enjoyed the most was talking to patients and getting to know them. Upon graduation in 2019, I wanted to stay home to care for my grandparents; unfortunately, my local psychiatric floor was not hiring. Instead, I found myself working in the operating room. Although the procedures were fascinating, I felt the most fulfilling part of the job was going to pre-op, listening to patients' concerns, providing education, and calming their worries. As I worked, I applied for the Doctor of Nursing Practice - Psychiatric Mental Health program. I was blessed with the opportunity to begin attending the program and cultivating my psychiatric mental health skills in 2021. During my program, I rotated at an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), an outpatient clinic, and a private practice. IOP trained me to provide patient teaching and facilitate group therapy. The outpatient clinic taught me more about medication and patient case management. The private practice provided me with the opportunity to conduct in-depth psychotherapy while also improving my medication management skills. I feel that I inherently connect with people and throughout my program, I often received patient and instructor feedback about how naturally I establish a therapeutic relationship. Mental health, to me, is the pinnacle of quality of life and it is my dream to provide as many people as I can with the best possible life I can. I am a passionate believer in the importance of patient empowerment. The patient-doctor relationship is key to this and, while I work well with all ages across the lifespan, I have found that I seem to connect especially well with adolescents and young adults. As a member of Gen Z, I understand firsthand the unique pressures of growing up in a rapidly expanding world. My lived experience and personality help me connect with young people on a deeper level, creating a safe and relatable space where they feel at ease. Where their voice is heard and understood. Adolescent and young adult patients often make statements to me along the lines of “you know how it is”. This is important because I feel like by being relatable to patients, I can effectively model and encourage them to improve their mental health. This fosters trust that builds into a therapeutic relationship optimized for collaboration and treatment plan adherence.