Lockwood retires after 26 years in psychiatric nursing

Bullhook Community Health Center psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner Suzanne Lockwood retired after 26 years in the profession.

"I was actually the first one licensed in the state of Montana," she said. "I came here and already was a nurse practitioner in another state, but Montana had to catch up to me."

She said she was licensed in 1993, is board-certified in psychiatry, and has prescriptive authority to diagnose and treat people with psychiatry or mental illnesses. 

Before starting work at Bullhook in 2016, she said, she worked for a while at Northern Montana Health Care and then at the Center for Mental Health out of Great Falls in its Havre satellite office.

She added that she worked for one year in a psychiatry emergency room in Anchorage, Alaska.

"I think, probably the greatest moments I have had have been when patients thank me basically for saving their life," Lockwood said. "That has happened a lot of times actually over the years."

When patients are treated adequately and with the correct medications and therapies, they really can improve the quality of their lives, she said.

She added that prior to being a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner she was a nurse and felt and saw a lot of people with mental illnesses being treated not very well.

"There is still a lot of stigma about mental illness, but back then it was much worse than it is now," she said, "and I just thought if there was something I could do to help with that I wanted to do that."

Lockwood is from Alliance, Ohio, then lived in Bloomington, Indiana, as she did her graduate work, she said.

She said she received her bachelor's degree in nursing at Indiana University in Bloomington then earned a master's degree in nursing and had to do 3,000 supervised hours, take a board certification exam and then apply for prescriptive authority.

"It's quite a process," she added.

When working as a registered nurse in critical care and finding herself surrounded by patients that were tubed from top to bottom, she decided she wanted to be able to talk to people, Lockwood said, adding that was when she switched from critical care to psychiatry.

Her mother was a registered nurse for most of her life, she said, adding that it caused her to go into nursing, and her father was a steel worker in a steel mill in Ohio.

"If you think about it, your mental health affects your physical health and conversely your physical health (affects) your mental health, so there is a really great need for all of us, practitioners, to treat people, I think, holistically. To look at all of it and not just treat one or the other," she said. "Here we really try and do a good job with what we call integration, so I work a lot with the medical staff, and they work with me to, hopefully, do a better job with treating people holistically - that we treat everything."

Mental illness is a sensitive topic, she said, adding that someone has to be willing to listen to people and meet them where they are.

She said sometimes some of her patients were not well-groomed or well-functioning, and though some may be put off by that, she is not.

"In my profession, I think, I would like people to know the psychiatric illnesses we treat today are really brain disorders, and most of them have a genetic base, so it's not like people choose to have a mental disorder, it's often a genetic predisposition," she said. "I think we need to be way better caring for people because these are brain disorders, they are not something people choose to have."

It is extremely important to take the time to listen, Lockwood said, and that is what her job has taught her.

"One of the things I've learned is that I have to leave things here or wherever I work, because if I took it home with me I would not be OK," she said. "I walk, I clear my head and I leave my work here when I shut the door."

Outside of work, she said, she takes care of herself whether it is going on walks or doing yoga.

She plans to spend her retirement time doing some of the things she enjoys, including spending time with her husband Steve and visiting their three daughters Ann, Annie and Catherine and their children.

She and her husband, Steve Lockwood, have been married 31 years, she said.

He currently works at Montana State University-Northern as a literary professor, she said, adding that he has been teaching there for three decades.

She said Annie and Catherine live in France while Ann lives in Fargo, North Dakota.

"When I'm retired, I want to do more of some of the things I really enjoy, like hiking, biking and walking, and probably eventually do some kind of volunteer work, I imagine, because of my work all my life," Lockwood said. "I like to crochet, sew, read, and so I'm going to do a lot of that stuff."

She said she enjoys hiking and biking in the mountains here and likes to do that with her family.

Relationships are what inspires her more than anything else, she said, adding that is how she did her job just by listening to people, not talking and asking questions.

"I'm ready to have a new adventure and a new Chapter," Lockwood said.

Bullhook Community Health Center is hosting an open house for her from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday.