PMHNP Salary: What the $132,300 Covers

No federal wage series covers psychiatric nurse practitioners.

Two real instruments exist, and they measure different things.

The first is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' single nurse practitioner occupation — SOC 29-1171, every specialty pooled — which reported a median of $132,300 for May 2025, on a middle half of $117,990 to $156,700.

The second is the American Association of Nurse Practitioners' 2024 NP Compensation Report, the one named, dated, PMHNP-specific source there is, which put median total income for psychiatric-mental-health-certified NPs at $140,000 — 2023 income, full-time respondents, paywalled.

Both figures are real.

Neither is a PMHNP salary, and the rest of this page is about what each one actually measures.

Start with the federal table.

The figure is current and pooled by construction — BLS counts occupations, not certifications: family nurse practitioners, adult-gerontology, pediatric, women's health and psychiatric NPs are all surveyed as one occupation, and the release publishes no split among them.

The $132,300 median, the $117,990–$156,700 interquartile range, the $101,340–$174,420 full published span and the 323,040 jobs all describe that whole population — most of whom are not psychiatric NPs.

Whether the psychiatric subset earns above or below the line is exactly what the table cannot say.

A page that prints $132,300 as "the PMHNP median" is quoting a real number under a false name.

The pooled-table problem has a cousin in the counseling data, where one combined occupation feeds two occupation names — the mechanism there is republishing; here it is simply that no finer federal series exists.

The PMHNP-specific instrument deserves describing precisely because its limits are what keep it honest.

AANP fielded the survey between March 20 and May 19, 2024, and every financial figure is based on 2023 calendar-year income; 10,275 NPs responded to the compensation questions, and the published tables are limited to full-time respondents, 35 or more hours a week.

For NPs certified in the psychiatry/mental health population, the report gives a median total income of $140,000 — total income meaning, in the report's definition, annual income from the NP's main work site inclusive of bonuses and incentive payments — across 394 respondents, with a mean of $146,302 and a median base salary of $135,000 across 329.

The median reported hourly rate was $77.00, from 77 respondents.

These are 2023 dollars from a self-selected sample in the hundreds: a survey, not a population measurement, and never a number to fold into the BLS table.

Set the two instruments side by side and the survey median sits $7,700 above the federal all-NP median — $140,000 against $132,300 — and that gap is the most tempting wrong number on this page.

It is not a premium anyone can bank, because the two figures measure different populations (a psychiatric-certified subset against all specialties), with different instruments (a self-reported survey against an employer payroll survey), over different periods (2023 income against May 2025 wages), on different measures (total income including bonuses against wages).

Direction, composition and period effects are all folded together inside that $7,700, and no source untangles them.

The safe conclusion is narrow: the one PMHNP-specific survey and the all-NP federal median sit $7,700 apart, and nothing more precise than that follows from them.

The figures that circulate deserve their own paragraph, because almost none survive their attribution. "$145,000 AANP median" is quoted on agency and aggregator sites; the report says $140,000. "$147,898, attributed to Medscape," is AANP's own clinical-focus mean — not a median, and not Medscape's.

A "$134,000 Medscape psychiatric NP average" cannot be verified: Medscape's public materials publish no PMHNP figure. "$116,770 average base" is an aggregator's estimate with no federal source behind it, as are the unsourced "$144,000" and the "PMHNP $118,895 mean, n = 1,829" that matches no published table in the AANP report.

A "~$132,000 PMHNP median" quoted by a staffing firm gives no source — and the all-NP federal median it sits numerically beside is not a PMHNP figure either.

The older "$129,210 NP median" comes from a superseded all-NP release.

Any "PMHNP salary" quoted to the dollar with no named, dated source is one of these.

Position inside the same May 2025 release keeps the federal figure honest in both directions.

Registered nurses — the licence every PMHNP holds before the graduate step — reported a median of $97,550 across 3,379,720 jobs, $34,750 below the all-NP median.

Psychiatrists — the physician tier above — reported $281,870, $149,570 higher, about 2.1 times the all-NP figure; the psychiatrist salary page reads that distribution in full.

The all-occupations median is $50,980, so the NP median sits $81,320 above it.

The distribution itself is notably compressed: the 90th percentile is 1.7 times the 10th — $174,420 against $101,340 — narrower than the registered-nurse spread (2.0) and far narrower than the combined counselor occupation (2.5), marriage and family therapists (2.8), clinical and counseling psychologists (3.3) or psychiatrists (5.3).

And the median sits below the middle of the middle half: $14,310 above the 25th percentile, $24,400 below the 75th.

What neither instrument can see matters as much as what they report.

The federal table has no specialty, setting, employer-type or experience axis — the percentiles are positions in one population's distribution, not a career ladder, so the 25th percentile is not an entry-level salary.

It counts wage-and-salary employees: owners, partners and the self-employed sit outside the series, which matters in a specialty where independent and contract practice is common.

The AANP survey self-selects, reports 2023 income, and crosses nothing: its state tables cover all NPs and its specialty tables are national, with no table joining the two.

And neither source connects pay to practice authority — no page should claim that full-practice-authority states pay more, because no source here measures that.

What practice authority does change is the job a posting describes.

Per AANP's classification — an advocacy label, not a legal category; the state's nurse practice act governs — 28 of the 51 jurisdictions (27 states plus DC) were full practice as of the map's May 2026 update, with 12 reduced and 11 restricted.

Eleven full-practice states add time-in-practice requirements before independence, and in five states — Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas — NPs may not prescribe Schedule II stimulants in ordinary outpatient practice, the single most practice-relevant fact for a psychiatric NP weighing a job in those states.

Even where the law no longer requires an agreement, the employer often still does: among NPs working under agreements in full-practice states, roughly three-quarters to four-fifths cite employer policy (Slade et al., 2025).

The tier-by-state map is on full practice authority by state, and the agreement mechanics on what a collaborative agreement requires.

There is no state table on this page, and unlike most gaps on this site, this one is not merely unbuilt — it is unmendable with current sources.

The federal release publishes a 29-1171 median for all 51 jurisdictions, but every one of them describes all NPs.

The AANP report crosses no state with psychiatric certification.

HRSA's National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses asks about both certification and earnings, so a PMHNP figure is computable from its public-use file — but HRSA publishes no such table, and a self-computed number would be this site's analysis, not a citable source.

So any "PMHNP salary in [state]" figure you encounter is an estimate without a source behind it, and this page declines to manufacture one.

Weighing an offer, use each number for what it is.

A base salary reads against the survey's $135,000 median base; total compensation against its $140,000 median total income — both 2023 figures.

An hourly posting reads against the survey's $77.00 median hourly rate, with the federal all-NP hourly median of $63.61 as the profession-wide payroll context.

And the federal table sets the wider frame: the middle half of all NPs earned between $117,990 and $156,700 in May 2025, so an offer far outside that band is an outlier against the profession's own distribution and deserves a closer look at what carries the premium.

To see how employers actually phrase the role, browse psychiatric nurse practitioner roles.

For the credential itself — the RN licence, the graduate program, the ANCC examination and the state licence that makes the authority real — start with what a psychiatric nurse practitioner is and how to become one.

This page is career information, not legal, clinical, or medical advice, and it is not guidance for anyone seeking treatment. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 and the AANP 2024 NP Compensation Report, as attributed; practice authority is set by state law and changes — confirm the current position with the state board of nursing before relying on any of it.