Justin Ray on Mindful Moments: Beyond Symptoms

Justin Ray, MSN, PMHNP-BC, founder of South Chesapeake Psychiatry and Transforming Minds Interventional Psychiatry, joined Pedro Morante, DNP, PMHNP-BC, FNP-BC, for the premiere episode of Mindful Moments, “Beyond Symptoms: The Next Frontier in Psychiatric Care,” streamed live on LinkedIn on October 24, 2026. Pedro introduced Justin as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, educator, and retired U.S. Navy veteran. The conversation starts from a simple standard: recovery should make a difference in someone’s everyday life, which means asking about more than symptoms.

Watch the episode on LinkedIn →

What the Episode Covers

• Recovery beyond symptoms. A symptom scale can improve while a person’s life does not. Justin frames meaningful recovery around four everyday questions: can you think clearly, keep your relationships, manage daily responsibilities, and pursue what matters to you? Those are the questions that shape a 60-minute psychiatric evaluation and ongoing medication management at South Chesapeake Psychiatry.
• Cognitive functioning in schizophrenia. Attention, memory, and processing speed often predict how someone does at work, at school, and at home more than the symptoms people usually picture. Justin has written about why cognition deserves the front seat in Rethinking Schizophrenia: When Cognition Drives the Bus and its follow-up, From Recognition to Restoration.
• Emerging psychiatric treatments. The discussion covers where the field is heading, including the first antipsychotic that works through muscarinic receptors rather than dopamine blockade, and the practical case for long-acting injectables. Related: What Psychiatric Times Got Right About Cobenfy and Optimizing the Use of Long-Acting Injectables.
• Evidence-based care that stays practical. Measuring response and remission, revisiting the plan when a medication is only partly working, and acting early after a first episode. Related: Response, Remission, and the Research and First-Break Psychosis: Why Timing, Treatment, and Tolerability Matter.
• Who takes care of the caregiver? Family members and clinicians carry a load that rarely shows up in a treatment plan. Justin and Pedro talk about what sustainable support looks like for the people doing the caring. Related: She Quit at the Top: Burnout and Recovery and the video Still Exhausted After Time Off?
• Keeping the person’s goals at the center. For Justin, every one of these threads comes back to the same habit: keep asking the client what meaningful improvement looks like for them, and measure care against that answer. It is the thinking behind the five pillars the practice is built on.

Mindful Moments — “Nursing the Mind, the Nurse Way” — is hosted by Pedro Morante, founder of PASS Review and PsychUp Mental Health, and is available on LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Podbean, Facebook, and Instagram. South Chesapeake Psychiatry provides unhurried psychiatric evaluations and ongoing medication management for children, adolescents, and adults, in person in Chesapeake and by secure video across Virginia; you can schedule an appointment online. Justin writes about new treatments and the science behind them every week in The Neuropsychiatry Brief on LinkedIn, and was recently featured in The American Journal of Managed Care and on KY3’s Mindful Monday. Watch the full episode on LinkedIn.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or call 911 in an emergency.