How to develop an intensive support team for older people in mental health crisis
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

How to develop an intensive support team for older people in mental health crisis

Aileen Murray-Gane Nurse consultant, Gosport War Memorial Hospital, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, Gosport, England

Why you should read this article:
  • To learn about the role of the older persons’ mental health intensive support team

  • To understand the gaps in crisis provision in older persons’ mental health services

  • To find out how to implement an intensive support team for older people

Older adults living with mental health issues often experience crises and require urgent intervention. It has been shown that assessing and treating older people who are experiencing a crisis in their own home can enhance outcomes compared with hospital admission. The author describes the implementation of a pilot intensive support team, which was designed to provide care in a patient’s home when they or their carer experienced a crisis that may otherwise have required hospital admission. This article details the implementation and outcomes of the intensive support team, and explains some of the challenges experienced by the team, in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mental Health Practice. doi: 10.7748/mhp.2021.e1567

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

@murray2812

Correspondence

Aileen.Murray-Gane@southernhealth.nhs.uk

Conflict of interest

None declared

Murray-Gane A (2021) How to develop an intensive support team for older people in mental health crisis. Mental Health Practice. doi: 10.7748/mhp.2021.e1567

Published online: 12 October 2021

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