Mary Denise Moller DNP, ARNP, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, CPRP, FAAN

Mary D. Moller, DNP, ARNP, PMHCNS-BC, CPRP, FAAN, is an advanced registered nurse practitioner who is dually certified as a clinical specialist in adult psychiatric-mental health nursing and a psychiatric rehabilitation practitioner. Dr. Moller is an Associate Professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, where she is lead faculty for the Undergraduate Psychiatric Nursing Program and track coordinator for the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner-Doctor of Nursing Program. Her teaching foci include psychopharmacology, psychopathology, group therapy, 1:1 psychotherapy, mental health assessment, and advanced practice nursing, including legislative activity related to independent practice.

Dr. Moller is also the Director of Psychiatric Services for Northwest Center for Integrated Health in Tacoma, Washington, where she is in practice as a psychiatric Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) treating patients in a triple integration agency: substance abuse, mental illness, and primary care. She is implementing psychiatric wellness protocols for relapse prevention across the three disciplines. From January 2009 to August 2014, Dr. Moller was the Director of the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner specialty at the Yale University School of Nursing. While in Connecticut, Dr. Moller was in practice as an APRN at Yale Behavioral Health of Hamden, an outpatient mental health center that served patients with co-occurring disorders.

From 1993-2008, Dr. Moller was the owner and Clinical Director of The Suncrest Wellness Center (SWC) located in Spokane, Washington. The SWC, the first independent nurse-managed, owned, and operated rural outpatient psychiatric clinic in the United States, was featured with Patty Duke on Good Morning America. In addition to her administrative duties and ongoing program research and QI activities, she managed a full caseload of over 300 patients, where she was responsible for primary mental health care including prescribing and monitoring psychotropic medications, conducting group therapy, and group psychoeducation on recovery from trauma, relapse prevention, and recovery from psychosis.

Dr. Moller’s research interests include psychological adjustment to and symptom management in recovery from schizophrenia, a wellness approach to symptom management of recovery from trauma and abuse, and, most recently, the identification of motivational strategies for nurse recruitment and retention based on self-determination theory. From 2009-2014, she served as part of the grant writing team and curriculum co-chair for the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration Recovery to Practice project with the American Psychiatric Nurses Association.