Top Online Psychiatric-Mental Health NP Programs (2025)
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Psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioners (PMHNPs) play an essential role in patient care in the United States. PMHNPs serve populations across the lifespan with their mental health needs, including patient education and disease prevention.
Psychiatric-mental health nurses are RNs who have completed an advanced master’s (MSN) or doctoral degree (DNP) specializing in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy, earning them the title of APRN or advanced practice registered nurse.
Most typically, these PMH-APRNs are PMHNPs (APNA, 2023).
PMHNPs can provide mental health assessments and prescribe treatments. They can specialize in gerontology, substance abuse, or holistic, integrated nursing. PMHNPs are expected to be in high demand due to decreased social stigma around mental health, expanded healthcare access, and stressful world events.
Aspiring psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioners must earn a master of science in nursing (MSN), post-master’s certificate (PMC), or doctor of nursing practice (DNP) with a PMHNP specialization. While nursing communities have called for DNP degrees to become the standard educational requirement for nurse practitioners, an MSN coupled with an NP specialization remains the base-level requirement.
Most online PMHNP programs offer flexibility in learning with online coursework, a minimal number of campus visits for immersions/intensives, and preceptorships local to the student. Since requirements vary from program to program, we have built out full-page online NP school profiles to more thoroughly detail what to expect. We update these yearly. Click on a school name in the rankings table below to view its profile.
Online PMHNP Program Rankings (2025)
The online psychiatric-mental health NP programs listed here are ranked by a combination of cost, admissions flexibility, and program variety. They are drawn from an in-depth database comprising 1,166 online NP programs at the MSN, DNP, and post-master’s certificate levels, representing what we believe to be a comprehensive list of online PMHNP programs entering the 2024-2025 academic year.
For our purposes, a program must require no more than nine campus visits in total to qualify for inclusion as an online program.
The tuition numbers listed in the table below represent the total estimated program tuition, and not the cost per semester or year.
At NPSchools.com, we seek to ensure the accuracy of the data on our website. Should you wish to report a new program, missing program, or informational error, please contact us to bring it to our attention.
Psychiatric Mental Health NP Career and Salary
According to the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Competencies from the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties, PMHNPs must know how to:
- Perform comprehensive physical and mental health assessments, psychiatric evaluations, and family assessments
- Identify factors that affect mental health including trauma, environment, family, genetics, coping skills, culture, gender, socioeconomic status, spiritual beliefs, cognition, substance abuse, developmental stage, and others
- Interpret diagnostic and lab tests
- Diagnose psychiatric disorders
- Develop treatment plans and recommend therapeutic interventions
- Prescribe psychotropic medications and other types of medications necessary for the improvement of their patients
The majority of PMHNPs work in psychiatric-mental health care facilities. Other prominent PMHNP work environments include hospitals, treatment facilities, private practice, and schools and educational facilities.
According to the American Psychological Association, mental health awareness has recently become more normalized, partly thanks to celebrities and influencers sharing their struggles on social media. In addition to increased awareness, the Minority Nurse lists the top four reasons for increased demand for psychiatric nurse practitioners:
- Expanded access to care with the Affordable Care Act
- PTSD treatment for veterans
- Caring for aging Baby Boomers
- Forecasted demand for APRNs
With expected nurse practitioner job growth of 46 percent between 2023 and 2033, which is well above the national average growth rate of 4 percent, over 135,500 new jobs should open up for NPs in the coming years (BLS, 2024).
The median wage for nurse practitioners falls at $126,260 (BLS, 2024).