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Rhonda Hodge '13, G'20, DNP'20 shares how her belief in seeing patients as people鈥攏ot just diagnoses鈥攕haped the founding of Harmony Psychiatric Services and inspired her to establish a UMass Boston scholarship supporting future psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners.

For Rhonda Hodge CER’13, G’20, PhD’20, conversations about mental health care start with the people at the center of it.

A UMass Boston alumna and founder of Harmony Psychiatric Services in Salem, New Hampshire, Hodge has spent her career building a practice centered on that idea. Since opening Harmony in 2015, she has grown it into a wide-ranging support system offering psychiatric care, therapy, coaching, and other services for children, teens, and adults. She has also found a meaningful way to give back to the university that helped launch her career, establishing a scholarship for future psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners.

Long before Harmony opened its doors, Hodge already knew the kind of care she wanted to provide—and the kind she did not.

“I started my career as a therapist, and I was a therapist for a number of years,” Hodge said. During that time, she worked with children in foster care and saw firsthand how easily mental health treatment could become impersonal and overly dependent on medication.

One memory, in particular, never left her.

“I had a lot of patients that were over medicated. I had this one little girl that I had to hold her head up during our sessions because of how medicated she was,” Hodge said.

That experience stayed with her. So did the conviction that there had to be a better way.

“I really just wanted to do mental health different and create a better landscape for people in need,” she said.

That belief became the foundation for Harmony: a practice that combines Hodge’s backgrounds in therapy and medicine while making room for something patients often do not get enough of: time, attention, and care that goes beyond symptoms.

“It’s hard when patients see providers every three to six months for ten minutes, and it’s all just about their negative symptoms,” Hodge said. “It really has nothing to do with who they are as people.”

Hodge brings that same mindset to the people who work alongside her. In a field where burnout is common, she believes flexibility matters. If a provider needs to put family first, she makes room for it.

“I really think that the provider being able to make their families a priority and their lives a priority helps to reduce burnout,” she said. “We really just try to be more of a family, rather than walking into a practice where the doctors or the providers are on top and the patients feel below them. The love within our team is an incredible strength to patients and to each other."

Over the years, Harmony has continued to evolve in response to what patients are asking for. Hodge said the practice has seen growing need among 天美传媒 students and young adults, particularly around ADHD and executive functioning challenges that became more visible after the pandemic. In response, Harmony has expanded support for that age group, including one-on-one coaching, intensive programs, and group offerings designed to help students build skills and feel less alone.

For Hodge, that growth has not come from chasing trends but from simply paying attention—and listening.

“I think it’s more community-based than it is looking at the research or looking at what other people are doing,” she said. “It’s really just knowing our people.”

At UMass Boston, Hodge has found another way to carry that work forward. In 2022, she established the Ryan-Hodge Scholarship Fund to support nursing students, especially those preparing to work in mental health. She said the idea came from a desire to give back to the university and community that meant so much to her, including the Run for Krystle Boston Marathon team, which she joined in 2015.

“I feel like it’s meant everything,” Hodge said of her experience with the team, calling them “a family.”

The scholarship became even more personal over time. Hodge said her father, who died in 2018, was an unwavering supporter of both the marathon team and UMass Boston. Then, in 2022, her sister died after a long struggle with mental health. After that, the fund took on even greater significance.

“That has shifted it for me a little bit,” Hodge said. “I really want to make sure that, besides being part of my life story and the work I do with mental health, it is also part of hers.”

Hodge said she wants the scholarship to help students stay on course in a demanding profession. Nursing students often have to cut back on work while completing clinical placements, making an already intense educational path even harder to manage financially. She hopes the fund helps make that path more accessible for students who feel called to the field.

“I want this scholarship to give them the ability to actually be able to continue with their education,” she said. “I want to make sure that that opportunity goes to everybody or anybody who wants it and is passionate about it.”

She speaks just as strongly about the preparation students receive at UMass Boston, which she credits with helping her build the career she has today. When asked what advice she gives current students and early-career nurse practitioners, she pointed to a feeling many people in healthcare professions know well: self-doubt.

“You’re going to feel like an imposter for the first five or six years, but you did the work” she said. “You know what you know.”

It’s advice that reflects the way Hodge approaches the work itself.

“Listen to your patients. Get to know them. Don’t look at just their symptoms. Look at who they are as people,” she said. “Sometimes that relationship that you’re building with a patient is more than a medication could ever do.”

Hodge said she hopes to expand Harmony’s impact across state lines and reach even more people in need of care. She welcomes fellow UMass Boston alumni and supporters who are passionate about mental health to connect with her at rhodge@harmonypsychiatric.com.