For over five decades, Mary Moller, DNP (NUR ’06), has been a trailblazing force in psychiatric nursing, revolutionizing how mental healthcare is taught, delivered and understood.
Driven by deep gratitude for the transformative impact of her education at Case Western Reserve University Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Moller has committed $25,000 for student scholarships. This scholarship will support nursing students dedicated to careers in mental healthcare and reflects Moller’s commitment to fostering the next generation of leaders in the field.
"Case Western Reserve changed my life," said Moller. Giving back is a core tenant of Moller’s faith, and she felt called to help the university make an impact for others the way it did for her.
Psychiatric nursing has been Moller’s passion for so long, it’s hard to imagine her doing anything else—but her path to the field was unexpected.
In the early 1970s, she began her nursing career with the intention of becoming a midwife. Despite her request for an assignment on the OB-GYN unit, she was assigned to the neurology and neurosurgery floor, which she describes as "about as far away" as possible from her original goal. However, this experience sparked her curiosity about neurology and the brain, steering her career toward neurological and, unbeknownst to her at the time, psychiatric care.
Later, while serving as a faculty member at an academic teaching hospital, her path diverged again. Moller was involuntarily assigned to a county psychiatric hospital to lead an eight-week psychiatric course for nursing students.
"I had no idea this experience would pave the way to psychiatry," she said. But it would turn out to be a pivotal moment in her career.
Witnessing the dehumanizing and custodial approach to patient care, she was deeply troubled by the lack of compassion and therapeutic intervention. In response, she sought to learn about psychopharmacology and psychiatric disorders to help patients with severe mental illness who are often neglected in the healthcare system.
This marked the beginning of her lifelong commitment to transforming mental healthcare, and led to her founding the first independent nurse-managed rural outpatient psychiatric clinic in the United States, which she operated for 17 years.
She continued her education at Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, where she conducted award-winning research on the lived experiences of individuals recovering from psychosis. It set the foundation for an impactful career, and in the nearly 20 years since graduating from CWRU, she has continued to advocate for proper care of psychiatric patients as a lecturer, both nationally and internationally, and by helping various institutions launch their own psychiatric nursing programs, including Yale University and Pacific Lutheran University.
Now, she is determined to help train the next generation of nursing leaders with her gift to her alma mater.
"Psychiatric nurses are the architects of their patients' futures," said Moller. "We are their external egos until they regain their internal sense of self. We collaboratively work with patients, shaping their recovery and ability to rejoin the world.