Your guide to working as a community mental health nurse

If you’re interested in becoming a community mental health nurse, you may be curious about the differences between this role and mental health nursing in a hospital environment.

Community mental health nurses support people outside of formal healthcare environments, enabling them to achieve a better quality of life closer to home. They work with children and adults who have a range of mental health needs, helping them to gain more control over their symptoms by planning out and providing structured support.

Here, we’ve outlined everything you need to know about mental health nursing in the community. Read on to learn all about the responsibilities, benefits, required skills, career progression opportunities and more.

What is a community mental health nurse?

A community mental health nurse is someone who provides essential care to patients, within their homes or in community settings. The people you support can range in age from children to adults or the elderly. You can also work with specific groups, such as the homeless or ex-offenders.

The role is designed to give both urgent and ongoing support to people diagnosed with mental health conditions across different areas of the community. You’ll provide them with tools that will help them to function more independently within society.

What are the benefits of nursing in the community?

A community mental health nurse position usually offers more flexibility, freedom, and autonomy. You’ll regularly work in a variety of different locations with different patients, with responsibility for your own workload.

It’s a rewarding role that lets you give back to the community, improve access to mental health support and contribute to the quality of care in specific areas. When you’re visiting people at home or working in community care locations, you’ll also develop relationships that make a positive difference in people’s lives as you become their trusted source of support.

What are the roles and responsibilities of community mental health nurses?

Your day-to-day work will be similar to other mental health nursing roles. You’ll build therapeutic relationships with patients, educating and empowering them throughout your time together. You’ll help to manage their medication, carry out assessments and monitor their progress with treatment. Your role is to help people understand their conditions and develop coping strategies for symptoms, partnering with them in their recovery so that they feel less alone in their struggles. Community mental health nurses offer a source of support and connection that can be a lifeline to the people they take care of.

Specific roles and responsibilities can include some of the following:

• Delivering psychological therapies
• Helping to improve physical health
• Delivering personalised and trauma-informed care
• Managing people’s medication prescriptions and monitoring progress
• Giving support for self-harm and/or substance use

Your duties will vary according to who you support. You could be working with people experiencing challenges such as eating disorders, addiction issues, or severe mental illnesses such as major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Where do community mental health nurses work?

Rather than working in a psychiatric facility, hospital ward or clinic, community mental health nurses work across many different community settings. These include:

• People’s homes
• Community health centres
• Residential accommodation
• GP surgeries
• Local clinics
• Intermediate care facilities
• Schools

Which colleagues do community mental health nurses tend to work with?

Mental health nurses in the community tend to work alone or as part of a multidisciplinary team. Either way, you’ll coordinate care plans with a range of other healthcare professionals to facilitate the delivery of effective long-term support.

Teams you may work with include:

• District nurses
• Occupational therapists
• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Social workers

What skills and qualities make a great community mental health nurse?

As a mental health nurse, you’ll likely already possess many of the qualities required in a community role. Here are a few of the skills needed to succeed as a community mental health nurse.

Strong communication

Within the role, you’ll provide information and support to many different people. You could be discussing complex information around treatment with healthcare workers, passing on sensitive news to relatives or talking people through their options at difficult times. So, it’s important that you’re able to communicate effectively with patients, family members, health professionals and other stakeholders.

Organisation skills

In order to maintain high-quality care, you’ll need to stay organised with the development and delivery of each individual care plan, making sure key actions are carried out on time and important information is communicated promptly. You’ll also have to keep up with regular patient appointments and meetings with other teams, so good timekeeping is also crucial.

Empathy

When you’re supporting people with different conditions, backgrounds, mental health needs and personal histories, it helps to be able to understand and empathise with what they’re going through. A community mental health nurse needs to treat every person with respect and help them to get better with dignity, no matter their situation.

Career progression opportunities

As a community mental health nurse, there is a diverse range of opportunities to pursue, including clinical and managerial roles.

You can look to study for further qualifications, such as a master’s degree or equivalent. For example, you can train as an advanced nurse practitioner to be able to assess, diagnose and treat patients, giving you more autonomy and the opportunity to run clinics led by nurses. Another option is to train to become a clinical nurse specialist if you wish to remain clinical-based.

If you’re more interested in leadership and management opportunities, you can become a nurse leader, moving into a team leader role before advancing into a service lead position. As you journey through your career path, there may also be opportunities to take on service manager and director roles, which are Band 8a and 8b positions.