Clinical Outcomes of Depressed Clients: A Review of Current Literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review current literature reporting clinical outcomes of depressed clients who are treated by advanced practice psychiatric nurses (APPN), primary care providers, and other mental health care providers. The APPN has always been prepared to provide both individual and group psychotherapy. Now the role has expanded to include prescriptive authority and an increased focus on the psycho-neurobiological aspects of treatment. To date, there are limited outcomes studies of APPN care. A computer search of research publications was conducted, which yielded 50 articles. After careful review of each, four quantitative studies were retained. The search was expanded to include other disciplines; ten additional studies were included.

Evaluation of a brief Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy for Psychological Distress among Female Icelandic University Students

“…It is important that nurses providing group CBT are trained especially in this therapy as was the case in this study. According to a literature review by Parrish and Peden (2009), clients express satisfaction with care provided by advanced psychiatric practice nurses and results show that their treatment is as effective as that of other professionals. Advanced practice nurses need to be active members of multiprofessional teams that develop, implement, and test evidence-based therapies to decrease psychological distress among university students who experience elevated distress symptoms (Mahmoud et al, 2012).…”

One Size Does Not Fit All: Balancing Individual and System Needs in Primary Care and Beyond

“…The majority of these outcomes were reported at the professional level, describing increased collaboration and job satisfaction; the latter of which was correlated with decreased workload among physicians and a greater sense of influence over the patient's well-being among non-physicians (Lalonde, 2011). Several sources reported increased patient satisfaction, commonly attributed to health care professionals with an expanded scope of practice or a new role being able to spend more time with the patient as compared to usual care where visits with physicians or specialists are often described by patients as rushed and/or less frequent (Bonsall, 2008;Dumont, 2009;Parrish, 2009).…”

“…Of the 125 articles, there were eight studies that described how the context of legal and regulatory changes formed the backdrop for their analysis of the impacts of other interventions involved (e.g., Marra, 2012;Parrish, 2009). Of these eight studies, four focused on changes at the legislative level, two at the provincial regulatory level, one at the regional regulatory level, and one at the institutional regulatory level.…”

Psychiatric mental health nursing: Why 2011 brings a pivotal moment

“…In isolated studies the quality of PMH APN services has been documented [33] but such research has not found its way into broader workforce studies. Evidence of recent PMH APN outcomes of care appear in the literature [34], but the data are far too small to raise national awareness of the potential of PMH APNs. With the electronic health record and automated billing records it would seem that PMH nurses could mine data on their work, but system anomalies may impede these efforts, particularly how APNs are identified on billing records and lack of systems to gather workforce data [35].…”