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Psychiatric admission for homeless people: the impact of a specialist community mental health team

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Martin Commander ,
Sue Odell  and
Sashi Sashidharan
Martin Commander*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, Department of Psychiatry, Northern Birmingham Mental Health (NHS) Trust Academic Unit, 71 Fentham Road, Erdington, Birmingham B23 6AL
Sue Odell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, Department of Psychiatry, Northern Birmingham Mental Health (NHS) Trust Academic Unit, 71 Fentham Road, Erdington, Birmingham B23 6AL
Sashi Sashidharan
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, Department of Psychiatry, Northern Birmingham Mental Health (NHS) Trust Academic Unit, 71 Fentham Road, Erdington, Birmingham B23 6AL
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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The difficulty in achieving good quality community mental health care for homeless people has received increasing attention during the last few years. Less consideration has been given to the provision of inpatient care. By comparing data collected before and after its inception, we examined the impact of a specialist community mental health team for homeless people on ‘no fixed abode’ admissions in Birmingham. Although the team was successfully involved in the admission and discharge process in a substantial proportion of cases, many admissions still took place out of hours and involved the police, while discharge was often against medical advice and occurred without follow-up. These findings and their implications for the provision of homeless services are discussed.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 21 , Issue 5 , May 1997 , pp. 260 - 263
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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