Cochrane

Background Many countries use compulsory community treatment (CCT) for people with severe mental health problems, including Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. Supporters of this approach suggest that CCT is necessary due to the shift to community care of people with severe mental illness and that it is less restrictive to ...

Background Severe mental illnesses are defined by diagnosis, degree of disability and the presence of some abnormal behaviour. Including schizophrenia and psychosis, severe mood problems, and personality disorder, severe mental illness can cause considerable distress over a long period of time to both the person affected and his or her family and ...

Protocol: The primary objective is to assess the safety and efficacy of early interventions for people in the prodromal stage of psychosis. The secondary objective is, if possible, to compare the effectiveness of the various different interventions.

The move from hospital to community-based care can be a frightening and difficult experience for people with severe mental illness (SMI). People with mental health problems may not have networks of support such as family, friends and carers. They often have no one they know personally to help them when they go home. To complicate matters, people with ...

Protocol: To evaluate evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) for the efficacy of self-help/guided self-help for people with schizophrenia or related disorders, compared with waiting list or placebo/treatment as usual, other psychological or pharmacological treatments (or combinations/augmentations). The secondary objectives are to ...

Since the 1960s, in North America and most of Europe, large psychiatric hospitals have been closed and small local hospital units established. Medical opinion as to whether people with mental illness should stay in hospital for months and years or just a few weeks has changed. Care in the community has been helped by the advent of medication for people ...

‘Dual diagnosis’ is the term used to describe people who have a mental health problem and also have problems with drugs or alcohol. In some areas, over 50% of all those with mental health difficulties will have problems with drugs or alcohol. For people with mental illness, substance misuse often has a negative and damaging effect on the symptoms of ...

Day hospitals are a less restrictive alternative to inpatient admission for people who are acutely and severely mentally ill. This review compares acute day hospital care to inpatient care. We found that at least one in five patients currently admitted to inpatient care could feasibly be cared for in an acute day hospital. Patients treated in the day ...

Psychiatric day hospitals offer care that is less restrictive than inpatient care but more intense than outpatient care. Day hospitals can be used to provide more intense/specialised outpatient care to people resistant to treatment (day treatment programmes) or to those needing long-term care (day care centres). They can also bridge the gap between ...

Schizophrenia is a long-term, chronic, illness with a worldwide lifetime prevalence of about one per cent. It has a high disability rate and the cost to individuals, their carers and health services is substantial. Although the majority of people with schizophrenia learn to cope in the community, there are some people who need help and reminders if ...