%0 Journal Article
%T Profiles of and practices in crisis resolution and home treatment teams in Norway: a longitudinal survey study
%A Bengt Karlsson
%A Marit Borg
%A Marthe Eklund
%A Hesook Kim
%J International Journal of Mental Health Systems
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1752-4458-5-19
%X A longitudinal survey of five CRHT teams in Norway was carried out for a period of 18 months with two sets of questionnaires-one for CRHT team profiles for a bi-yearly survey and the other for services and practices of CRHT teams for a monthly survey.The five CRHT teams were configured by a set of common basic characteristics in their operations, while at the same time were variant in several areas of the teams' structures and processes. Significant differences among the teams were evident in terms of the structural aspects such as service locality, staffing and team make-up, caseload, service hours, and travel time, and the process aspects such as the number of referrals received, referral source, admission, service duration, and discharge destination. These variations are reflected upon the perspectives regarding the nature of mental health crisis, the conflicting policies in mental health services, and the nature of home-based mental health care.The diversity in the way CRHT teams are established and operate needs to be examined further in order to understand the reasons for such variations and their impact on the quality of services to service users and in relation to the total mental health service system in a community.Comprehensive changes have been seen in the mental health service systems during the last decades with the intention to benefit service users and their families. A major challenge in these developments has been to establish accessible and competent acute mental health services in lieu of or in combination with acute in-patient care. One intervention has been crisis resolution home treatment team (CRHT), one of the so-called 'functional teams' developed in United Kingdom as part of The National Service Framework (NSF) [1,2]. In line with World Health Organization's and the European policies' emphasis on community based treatment and rehabilitation, the overall objective of these teams is to offer comprehensive treatment and support in people's ho
%U http://www.ijmhs.com/content/5/1/19