Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
Lance Anders
PMHNP | Child, Adolescent & Young Adult Care
Board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner specialising in medication management, with a sub-specialty in children and adolescents. Lance Anders works with the patients who are hardest to reach — young people whose difficulties get written off as a phase, and the families trying to work out whether to worry.
● Accepting New Patients ● Children & Adolescents ● Telehealth Available
About Lance Anders
Care That Starts With Listening
Lance Anders is a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, currently completing his Doctorate in Nursing Practice at Washington State University. He has fifteen years of nursing experience behind him, the last seven dedicated to behavioural and mental health. Most of his patients are younger than the rest of ours — children, teenagers and young adults, the people whose difficulties tend to get filed away as a phase, a stage, or something they will grow out of.
Sometimes that is exactly what it is. Often it is not, and the waiting costs years. Lance builds treatment plans with his patients rather than for them — medication management first, supported by psychotherapy and practical self-care — and starts from the view that the plan belongs to the person who has to follow it.
Credentials & Background
✓ Board-Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP)
✓ Doctorate in Nursing Practice (in progress) — Washington State University
✓ 15 Years’ Nursing Experience — 7 in Behavioural & Mental Health
✓ Child & Adolescent Mental Health
✓ Medication Management — GAD, MDD, ADHD, Sleep Disorders
✓ Behavioural Issues & Adjustment Disorders
✓ Substance Use Disorders
✓ Cognitive Behavioural & Strength-Based Therapy
✓ In-Person & Telehealth Appointments
Psychiatric services
What Lance Anders Treats
Lance Anders provides psychiatric assessment, diagnosis and ongoing medication management for children, adolescents and adults — supported by psychotherapy and practical self-care where they help. Every patient receives a care plan built around their diagnosis, their history and their goals, and built with them rather than handed to them.
Children & Adolescents
Lance is motivated by work with children and young adults, and his first job in the room is making a young person feel that the room is safe — including the ones who made it clear they did not want to come. He treats anxiety, depression, mood and behavioural concerns, adjustment issues and anger management.
ADHD & Attention
ADHD is one of Lance’s primary specialisms — assessment, diagnosis and ongoing management for children, adolescents and adults. That includes the adults who were never assessed as children and have spent years assuming the difficulty was character rather than wiring.
Anxiety & Depression
Generalised anxiety and major depressive disorder are among the conditions Lance treats most often — careful medication management, regular review, and adjustment until the fit is right. He also works with sleep disorders, behavioural issues, OCD, postpartum depression, PTSD and suicidal ideation.
Substance Use
Lance has experience managing substance use disorders alongside the mental health conditions that so often travel with them. Treating one while ignoring the other rarely works — so both belong in the same plan, with the same provider, rather than split across two clinics.
Telehealth Psychiatry
Not everyone can make it to Medical Lake in person, and for a lot of families the barrier is logistical rather than motivational — school hours, work shifts, the drive. Telehealth appointments bring Lance’s care to you, wherever you are in the Spokane area, from the privacy of your own home.
Lance Anders’ approach
The Plan Belongs to the Patient
Lance works from cognitive behavioural, strength-based and solution-focused approaches, which in practice means starting from what a person can already do rather than cataloguing what they cannot. For a teenager who has been told what is wrong with them by several adults already, that difference is not academic.
He builds every plan collaboratively — medication management, psychotherapy and self-care techniques, chosen with the patient rather than prescribed at them. As part of the Essential Psychiatry team, his patients also benefit from the connection between mental and physical health that our whole-person model makes possible.
Conditions Lance Anders treats
✓ Children & Adolescents
✓ ADHD
✓ Generalised Anxiety (GAD)
✓ Major Depressive Disorder
✓ Sleep Disorders
✓ Behavioural Issues
✓ Adjustment Issues
✓ Anger Management
✓ Mood Disorders & OCD
✓ PTSD & Trauma
✓ Substance Use
✓ Medication Management
“You do not need a diagnosis to book an appointment, and you do not need to be certain. Most parents who call are somewhere between genuinely worried and hoping they are overreacting. One appointment is what it costs to find out which.”
Serving Those Who Served Us
Our psychiatric team understands the weight that veterans and first responders carry - because our lead provider has carried it herself. We've built our services around helping you carry less of it. Essential Psychiatry is led by retired USAF Staff Sergeant Dr. Candie Wellwood, DNP, PMHNP - a veteran who has walked the same path. We are a VA preferred provider for PTSD and depression. All you need is a referral from the VA.
Ready to Take the First Step?
Whether you are a parent worried about your child, a young adult who has been managing alone for a while, or someone looking for straightforward, expert psychiatric care — Lance Anders is accepting new patients now. In-person and telehealth appointments both available.
Medical Lake, WA · (509) 299-6900 · Telehealth Available
Accepting Aetna, Cigna, First Choice, Kaiser Permanente, Kaiser Washington Medicare Advantage, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, PacificSource, PacificSource Legacy, Premera Blue Cross, Regence and United Healthcare