No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Computers and process description for community mental health care
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2014
Extract
The focus of mental health care has seen a significant shift from institutional care to community based care and has been well described (Thornicroft & Bebbington, 1989). This shift has necessitated the development of new and flexible models for ensuring that patients' needs are met. Mental health professionals have to operate across a wide range of community contexts dealing with a complex range of needs. Intensive Case Management (ICM) also known as Assertive Community Treatment is a model of service provision to the long term mentally ill in the community. The Programme of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) developed by Stein & Test (1980) in the United States has a number of Key elements (figure 1).
ACT-based ICM is unusual in that it has been extensively researched (principally in the United States of America), and programmes are relatively well described. Such descriptions, especially of programmes outside America, often focus on underlying principals and philosophies and do little to measure practice. Teague et al. (1995), however, devised clear criteria for measuring practice components and McGrew et al. (1994) asked ACT “experts” to rate the “key” elements of PACT and related a number of these to levels of hospital use. In the United Kingdom, Thornicroft (1991) listed twelve axes for describing the central practice characteristics of case management (a broad concept including ICM). These UK ‘practice characteristics’ also focus more on macro-level programme description rather than on the practices of programme staff. There is a pressing need for research into exactly what teams do.
- Type
- Section B: From Service Description to Service Evaluation
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997
References
Department of Health (1990). The Care Programme Approach for People with a Mental Illness Referred to the Specialist Psychiatric Services. Department of Health: London.Google Scholar
Easton, C. & Oyebode, F. (1996). Administrative demands of care programme approach (C). British Medical Journal 321, 1540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiander, M. & Burns, T. (1996). Defining community mental health practice: a Delphi method approach to describing programme models (submitted for publication).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, A. & Burns, T. (1996). Setting up an assertive community treatment service. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 2,143–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGrew, J.H., Bond, G.R., Dietzen, L.L. & Salyers, M. (1994). Measuring the fidelity of implementation of a mental health programme model. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62, 670–678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, L.I. & Test, M.A. (1980). Alternative to mental hospital treatment. 1. Conceptual model, treatment programme and clinical evaluation. Archives of General Psychiatry 37, 392–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teague, G.B., Drake, R.E. & Ackerson, T.H. (1995). Evaluating use of continuous treatment teams for persons with mental illness and substance abuse. Psychiatric Services 46, 689–695.Google ScholarPubMed
Thornicroft, G. (1991). The concept of case management for long-term mental illness. International Review of Psychiatry 3, 125–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornicroft, G. & Bebbington, P. (1989). Deinstitutionalisation. From hospital closure to service development. British Journal of Psychiatry 155, 739–753.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed