Ashley L. Peterson

Ashley began her career in health care as a pharmacist in 2002, but she quickly returned to school to get a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. During her 15-year nursing career, she specialized in the field of mental health, working primarily with people with serious and persistent mental illness in both hospital and community settings. Two years into her nursing career, Ashley was hospitalized and diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Since then, she has been passionate about sharing her own experiences to challenge stigma and generate open conversations about mental health and illness. For her Master of Psychiatric Nursing thesis work, she used a research method called autoethnography to situate her own experiences with mental illness within nursing culture, addressing issues like stigma. She published several papers in peer-reviewed nursing journals based on this work. Since illness-related disability has brought her nursing career to a close, Ashley has shifted her focus to writing and advocacy efforts online, including on her blog, Mental Health @ Home.