Nurse Practitioner Closes Mental Health Care Gap in Memphis

Lenise Murrell opened Melané Psychiatry & Wellness in Memphis, Tennessee in 2026, bringing telehealth mental health care to a region where providers are in short supply.

A dual-certified Psychiatric Mental Health and Family Nurse Practitioner with more than 10 years of experience across psychiatry, behavioral health, primary care, urgent care, and telemedicine, Murrell built the practice around the personalized, patient-centered care she’d spent a decade watching her patients go without.

She spent most of her career in family medicine, serving communities in and around the Memphis area. Over time, she noticed the same pattern: more people coming in struggling with their mental health, and fewer places for them to turn.

A Shortage With Real Numbers

She wasn’t imagining it. More than one in five adults live with a mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And the number of providers available to treat them keeps shrinking. As of December 2025, 40% of the U.S. population lived in a federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA), where the ratio of people to providers can top 30,000 to 1, according to the Bureau of Health Workforce.

Clinical Skill, Missing Business Pieces

She had the clinical experience and a clear picture of the care she wanted to offer. What she still needed was startup money and a better understanding of the business side.

She found Communities Unlimited (CU) through a listing on the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) website. One phone call connected her with CU Loan Officer Sabrina Edinburgh from the Lending Team. Edinburgh walked her through the loan process and brought in Senior Management Consultant Rhett Douglas from CU’s Entrepreneurship Team. Douglas worked through the business side of running a practice with her.

Funding the Gap Before the First Insurance Check

CU closed on an SBA loan for startup costs and working capital in July. The loan kept the practice running during insurance credentialing, which can take months before a new practice gets its first insurance payment. That kind of bridge financing is a familiar piece of Communities Unlimited’s lending work with entrepreneurs across the region.

Open, Seeing Patients, and Growing

By August, Melané Psychiatry & Wellness was open and seeing patients, offering evaluation and treatment for children, teens, and adults alongside medical weight management services through virtual and in-office appointments. Murrell built the practice with a particular focus on women of color and high-functioning women managing mental health challenges, often while holding everything else together.

“My passion is just being able to see the patients when they first come to see me, and then just over time how they began to develop life skills, and they’re doing better, and just seeing that outlook completely different from their first initial visit,” Lenise said. “That brings me joy that I’m out here making a difference in the community.”

What’s Next

Demand has come faster than she expected. Murrell already has more clients than she planned for, and many of them want to meet in person instead of over video. She has toured a new facility to see what it would take to build out a suite of her own. She also plans to hire a part-time administrative assistant as the practice grows. That’s a new job on the way, from a practice that’s just getting started.