Community Mental Health Teams: A Guide to Current Practices

Community mental health teams have grown over the past thirty to forty years to care for people with serious mental illness who would once have been treated in large mental hospitals. Tom Burns explains that these teams, made up of nurses, doctors, social workers and psychologists, now play a central role in mental health care across the developed world.

The teams have evolved rather than been designed, so there is little published guidance on how they should function, how members from different disciplines can collaborate, or who should do what. The book sets out practical advice for those working in these teams. It addresses the needs of individual specialists and gives clinical advice based on what has been shown to work.

It also looks at the functional teams that developed later, among them the assertive outreach, crisis resolution and early intervention models, with an account of how each works and how they differ.ISBN-13 9780198529996.