The primary care role of the community psychiatric nurse

From adjutant to autonomist, the community psychiatric nurse's (CPN) relati vely brief existence has been rapid in terms of role development. Many of t hem have settled in communal dwellings with their social work compeers and most of them have an allegiance with those people termed 'severely mentally ill'. The CPN who builds their home in primary care is a truly different a nimal. They have two fundamental responsibilities: as a clinician to those who are transiently emotionally disabled and as a commissure nurse working at the interface of primary and secondary care. Whilst their roots are firm ly embedded in psychiatry, it is the family doctor they court not the psych iatrist as they pitch their stall where the majority of people in psycholog ical distress prefer it to be: in the general practitioner's surgery. Behol d, the primary mental health nurse-historically peripheral but increasingly becoming the fulcrum of primary mental health care.