APNA Council For Mental Health Advocacy
Vision
The Council for Mental Health Advocacy empowers members to use their expertise effectively in individual mental health advocacy efforts. By sharing knowledge, building skills, and connecting members, the council supports a grassroots network of psychiatric-mental health nurses that builds on APNA’s broader advocacy to help members take informed, individual action that supports the profession and advances care.
Goals
- Share existing resources and tools to help APNA members understand what mental health advocacy is and how they can participate as individuals.
- Support APNA members in developing the skill sets needed for effective individual mental health advocacy at the local and national levels.
- Cultivate a community of psychiatric-mental health nurses with interest in sharing and expanding knowledge in how to translate their nursing expertise into effective individual mental health advocacy.
Charge
- Conduct internal council assessments to identify gaps in psychiatric-mental health nurses’ knowledge of mental health advocacy skills, such as surveys of council members or structured discussions on the Advisory Panel Member Bridge community. Use the findings to recommend specific activities to the APNA Board of Directors, such as resource development, national communications, or programs.
- Review the APNA Mental Health Advocacy Toolkit to ensure it provides current and accurate information to support members in their mental health advocacy. Make quarterly and as-needed recommendations for updates to improve the resource’s relevance, usefulness, and coverage of emerging advocacy methods (e.g., how to use AI to support advocacy efforts or how to identify credible sources of information).
- Use APNA policy alerts to monitor high-impact issues for PMH nurses and those in their care and help council members understand these issues and how they may act as individuals (e.g., Member Bridge discussion on how to provide public comment on a proposed state of federal policy).
- Provide ongoing opportunities to develop members’ individual mental health advocacy skills (e.g., through regular information sessions at meetings or presentations provided by member experts in areas such as serving as an expert witness or providing legislative testimony).
- Synthesize and share existing advocacy information for APNA members (e.g., submit abstracts for the APNA Annual Conference, provide individual success story articles for APNA News and/or post updates to Member Bridge to inform the membership).
- Disseminate and highlight APNA mental health advocacy resources and efforts to members, such as APNA Position Papers, Issue Statements, Reports, and letters, including examples of how to use them in individual advocacy efforts at local and national levels (e.g., adapt APNA position papers into talking points for nurses or brief educational resources for community partners).
- Identify members within the council who can serve as subject matter experts as needed for Board-directed initiatives (e.g., representing APNA for external programs, serving on a task force, providing content for a resource or presentation, etc.).
Resources
