Atkinson Family Practice

Anne Vaillant, RN, CNM, PMHNP joined AFP in January of 2019, as a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner in the Amherst office. Having worked as a Nurse Midwife, Anne comes to AFP with passions in both psychiatry and women’s health. Her goal—to treat both mind and body. In her experience “psychiatry has a history of neglecting the context of the body, the family, society. Midwives keep all that front and center in their work, and it is this philosophy, contextual, interconnected, strength-based, that informs my mental health practice.”

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Anne did part of her psychiatric training at AFP in the summer of 2018 and knew right away that AFP’s collaborative, holistic practice model would be a good fit. “I was blown away by the interdisciplinary meetings and the quality of the care for the whole person. I had not worked in a practice where things like the ACE score were used routinely to assess health risks and inform plans of care, and that really impressed me right from the start.”

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The Adverse Childhood Experience, or ACE score was developed in the late 1990’s by Vincent Felitti MD as a way to assess current and future health risks based on the level of trauma and household dysfunction a person experienced prior to age 18. In a study of 17,000 mostly middle class Kaiser Permanente patients, Felitti found a direct, dose-dependent relationship between early life experiences of stressors such as divorce, abuse, and neglect and subsequent physical health problems like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness. AFP is moving to incorporate the ACE score as part of its routine patient assessment process, a move Anne supports as part of our commitment to understanding and treating the mind/body of every client.

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Anne received her Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner degree from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, followed by a Nurse-Midwife certificate from the University of Rhode Island in 1997 and a masters in psychiatric nursing from the University of St. Joseph in 2018. In her spare time, you will see her hiking and skiing with her husband and two teenage daughters as well as gardening, fermenting, and making mosaics.

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We are very lucky to have Anne here at AFP with her vast knowledge and experience. If you feel you could utilize Anne Vaillant’s services, discuss with your AFP Provider.

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-Alex LaMarche

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