Effect of joint crisis plans on use of compulsory treatment in psychiatry: single blind randomised controlled trial. A randomized controlled trial of individual psychological debriefing for victims of violent crime.
To investigate whether a form of advance agreement for people with severe mental illness can reduce the use of inpatient services and compulsory admission or treatment.
                Single blind randomised controlled trial, with randomisation of individual patients. The investigator was blind to allocation.
                Eight community mental health teams in southern England.
                160 people with an operational diagnosis of psychotic illness or non-psychotic bipolar disorder who had experienced a hospital admission within the previous two years.
                The joint crisis plan was formulated by the patient, care coordinator, psychiatrist, and project worker and contained contact information, details of mental and physical illnesses, treatments, indicators for relapse, and advance statements of preferences for care in the event of future relapse.
                Admission to hospital, bed days, and use of the Mental Health Act over 15 month follow up.
                Use of the Mental Health Act was significantly reduced for the intervention group, 13% (10/80) of whom experienced compulsory admission or treatment compared with 27% (21/80) of the control group (risk ratio 0.48, 95% confidence interval 0.24 to 0.95, P = 0.028). As a consequence, the mean number of days of detention (days spent as an inpatient while under a section of the Mental Health Act) for the whole intervention group was 14 compared with 31 for the control group (difference 16, 0 to 36, P = 0.04). For those admitted under a section of the Mental Health Act, the number of days of detention was similar in the two groups (means 114 and 117, difference 3, -61 to 67, P = 0.98). The intervention group had fewer admissions (risk ratio 0.69, 0.45 to 1.04, P = 0.07). There was no evidence for differences in bed days (total number of days spent as an inpatient) (means 32 and 36, difference 4, -18 to 26, P = 0.15 for the whole sample; means 107 and 83, difference -24, -72 to 24, P = 0.39 for those admitted).
                Use of joint crisis plans reduced compulsory admissions and treatment in patients with severe mental illness. The reduction in overall admission was less. This is the first structured clinical intervention that seems to reduce compulsory admission and treatment in mental health services. It has been suggested that giving people the opportunity talk about a traumatic experience may prevent the development of later disorder. We tested the efficacy of two brief interventions, education and psychological debriefing, designed to prevent adverse psychological reactions to criminal victimization.
                Individuals who had been the victims of a violent crime within the past month were written to and invited to take part in a study of their attitudes to crime and punishment: 2161 were contacted and 243 replied, of whom 157 were eligible and were randomly assigned either to an education condition, to a psychological debriefing plus education condition, or to an assessment only condition. Education involved providing information about normal post-traumatic reactions. Debriefing involved in-depth probing about events, thoughts and feelings experienced during the crime. Subjects were recruited from police and hospital sources and interviewed in their own homes: 138 were followed up at 6 months, and 92 at 11 months.
                Outcome was assessed using a DSM-III-R diagnosis of PTSD, the Post-traumatic Symptom Scale, the Impact of Event Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. All groups improved over time but there were no between-group differences.
                No evidence was found to support the efficacy of brief one-session interventions for preventing post-traumatic symptoms in individual victims of violent crime.
Compulsory community treatment results in no significant difference in service use, social functioning or quality of life compared with standard care. People receiving compulsory community treatment were, however, less likely to be victims of violent or non-violent crime. It is unclear whether this benefit is due to the intensity of treatment or its compulsory nature. Evaluation of a wide range of outcomes should be considered when this type of legislation is introduced.
[Note: the five citations in the awaiting classification section of the review may alter the conclusions of the review once assessed.]