Mental Health Crisis Team: The Positives And Negatives
Insights And Thoughts While Recovering From Crisis
The last few weeks have been difficult for me. A few weekends ago I hit my limit and was unable to manage anymore. Ultimately this resulted in me being supported by the Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team. This team is considered secondary care within the NHS and provide intensive, community-based support as an alternative to hospitalisation.
I would like to consider the positives and negatives of my experience and suggest some aspects that could make the service more accessible for neurodivergent, particularly Autistic, service users.
Positive Experiences
The Crisis Team made contact with me in under 24 hours and I had my first face-to-face contact in less than 48 hours. This made me feel that my syruggle was being taken seriously and that there was hope for effective support.
Crisis Team staff were generally supportive and didn't particularly invalidate my experiences. They seemed open to listening rather than telling me I was wrong.
Once I had seen their psychiatrist, changes to medication and monitoring of my improvement was reasonably well managed and I did not feel like a problem when I asked them questions or said something wasn't working.
Negative Experiences
No fixed time for appointments was given. I was given a two hour window and they would turn up at any point in that window. This was anxiety provoking and prevented me from properly planning my day.
The psychiatrist was very fixated on ketogenic diets and while he was good with my medication, his focus on keto diets harmed my confidence in him.
I was given less than 24 hours notice of my discharge from the crisis team, and the notice given was not intentional, rather a by-product of me trying to reorganise the appointment. It was very distressing to me to be discharged so suddenly when I had not been given space to discuss this and did not necessarily feel ready to be discharged.
How Can They Improve?
Be more specific with appointment times. This will make appointments more accessible to the people they are serving, and reduce the impact on our daily routines.
Be aware that service-users are not necessarily in the headspace to discuss or implement big changes to things like diet or daily routine. If we're under the crisis team, we're already barely clinging on.
Make plenty of time and space to discuss impending discharges and listen if someone does not feel ready. There needs to be a balance between the time limited nature of crisis team intervention and the needs of the service-user. Sudden changes are incredibly dysregulating.
Overall I am grateful for the support the Crisis Team gave me, but there are definitely improvements needed. It is not often I can give praise to mainstream mental health services, but ultimately they got me on a path to recovery from my episode, and for that I am grateful
What are your experiences of mental health services?
Do you have any thoughts on good and bad things about crisis teams?
So sorry to read this! You're such an encouragement to the "watching world" - thank you for sharing your struggles and experiences to help us better understand. Take care, rest, feel better! Maybe even try the diet, ugh. (Some of us have a hard time knowing when and where to say the right things...fingers pointing at me.)
Did the clinician specify why a Ketogenic diet would be helpful to you in this moment? It seems incongruous timing to suggest whilst seeking acute MH crisis support. I'm an advocate of Ketogenic diet, because it really helps my energy levels and reduces inflammation which benefits my hypermobility pain enormously, but I can't really see a tie-in here and I would have felt as frustrated as you.