ABSTRACT
As the chapters in this book have attested, community mental health nurses have travelled a long way from their modest beginnings almost half a century ago. CMHNs can now be found in a wide variety of practice areas, employing any of a range of therapeutic approaches. However, CMHNs still struggle to identify and articulate their particular contribution to mental health care. This struggle is reflected, in part, by the use of two different terms to describe nurses who work with people with mental health problems living in the community: ‘community mental health nurse’ (CMHN), and ‘community psychiatric nurse’ (CPN). Both terms are used in this book, in — apparently — an entirely interchangeable way.
