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Background: Crisis Resolution Teams (CRTs) offer home-based care for people in mental health crisis, as an alternative to hospital admission. The success of CRTs in England has been variable. In response to this, the CRT Optimization and RElapse prevention (CORE) study developed and trialled a 12-month Service Improvement Programme (SIP) based on a fidelity model. This paper describes a qualitative evaluation of the perspectives of CRT staff, managers, and programme facilitators. We identify barriers and facilitators to implementation, and mechanisms by which service improvements took place. Methods: Managers and staff from six purposively sampled CRTs were interviewed, as well as six facilitators who were employed to support the implementation of service improvement plans. Semi-structured focus groups and individual interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: A majority of participants viewed all components of the SIP as helpful in improving practice, although online resources were under-used. Perceived barriers to implementation centred principally around lack of staff time and ownership. Support from both senior staff and facilitators was essential in enabling teams to undertake the work associated with the SIP. All participating stakeholder groups reported that using the fidelity model to benchmark their CRT work to best practice and feel part of a 'bigger whole' was valuable. Conclusion: CRT staff, managers and programme facilitators thought that a structured service improvement programme helped to increase fidelity to a best practice model. Flexibility (from all stakeholders) was key to enable service improvement actions to be manageable within time- and resource-poor teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Heterogeneous brief non-pharmacological interventions and guidelines exist to treat the burgeoning presentations to both emergency department and inpatient settings, for those in a crisis of mental ill-health. We systematically reviewed the literature to create a taxonomy of these brief non-pharmacological interventions, and review their evaluation methods and effectiveness. Method: We conducted a systematic review across Cochrane, CINAHL, DARE, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO databases. Studies meeting quality criteria, using Joanna Briggs Institute tools, were eligible. Interventions were categorised, and outcomes synthesised. Results: Thirty-nine studies were included: 8 randomised controlled trials, 17 quasi-experimental, 11 qualitative studies, and 3 file audits. Taxonomy produced six coherent intervention types: Skills-focussed, Environment-focussed, Special Observation, Psychoeducation, Multicomponent Group and Multicomponent Individual. Despite this, a broad and inconsistent range of outcome measures reflected different outcome priorities and prevented systematic comparison of different types of intervention or meta-analysis. Few brief non-pharmacological interventions had consistent evidential support: sensory modulation rooms consistently improved distress in inpatient settings. Short admissions may reduce suicide attempts and readmission, if accompanied by psychotherapy. Suicide-specific interventions in emergency departments may improve depressive symptoms, but not suicide attempt rates. There was evidence that brief non-pharmacological interventions did not reduce incidence of self-harm on inpatient wards. We found no evidence for frequently used interventions such as no-suicide contracting, special observation or inpatient self-harm interventions. Conclusion: Categorising brief non-pharmacological interventions is feasible, but an evidence base for many is severely limited if not missing. Even when there is evidence, the inconsistency in outcomes often precludes clinicians from making inferences, although some interventions show promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Digital health interventions (DHIs) may enable low cost, scalable improvements in the quality of care for adults with schizophrenia. Given the fast-growing number of studies using these tools, this review aimed to assess the efficacy and feasibility of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of DHIs among people with schizophrenia, focusing on human support., Design: A systematic search of PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases was conducted in January 2024 to identify relevant RCTs. Random effects meta-analyses were undertaken to evaluate the effects on psychosis symptoms, cognition, and other health-related outcomes., Results: Twenty-six RCTs (n = 2481 participants) were included. Pooled recruitment and retention rates were 57.4% and 87.6%, respectively. DHIs showed no statistically significant effect sizes across all examined outcomes, including psychosis symptoms, depression, quality of life, global and social cognition, global and social functioning, and medication adherence. A third (34.6%) of DHIs were developed using co-design while the majority (70%) personalized the intervention to its users and 69.2% were deemed to be at high risk of bias. There were trends toward effects in favor of DHIs with human support for social cognition and quality of life., Conclusions: DHIs are feasible for people with schizophrenia and potentially useful for improving health outcomes, particularly when including human support. More high-quality studies are required to examine the benefits of human support within DHIs. Future research should examine the feasibility of sustained adherence and benefits from digital interventions, possibly incorporating human interaction complemented with artificial intelligence, in real-world clinical settings., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.)