Recovery environment of a sub-acute mental health service

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the recovery environment of a sub-acute residential mental health service. Such services are increasingly filling a gap in the continuum of care for people with recurrent mental illness and have a major role supporting the processes of recovery. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional design was used with clients and staff completing the recovery enhancing environment measure. Nine clients who had entered the service from the community (step-up), 18 who had transferred from an inpatient unit (step-down) and ten staff completed the measure. Findings – Clients and staff rated the organisational climate of the service positively, with the role of caring staff being identified as particularly valuable. Clients and staff had similar positive views on the importance of recovery-based elements and rated the service as performing well in these areas. Step-up clients identified performance gaps in the areas of self-management, general health, personal strengths, and personal relationships. Step-down clients identified a range of gaps, including meeting basic needs, empowerment, and fundamental recovery processes. Practical implications – An assessment of the perceptions of clients and staff can allow services to identify differences in the attitudes of each group and ascertain areas in which the service can be improved to better meet the needs of individual clients. This may include being responsive to the setting from which clients have entered the service. Originality/value – This is the first study that has examined the recovery environment of a residential mental health service and how it meets the recovery needs of both step-up and step-down admissions.

Step-up, step-down mental health care service: evidence from Western Australia’s first – a mixed-method cohort study

“…The Australian literature on the SUSD model is currently limited but growing. Existing studies have described aspects of the model as applied in different service settings such as location, capacity, goals and parameters, service usage demographics and service approach and program activities [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In addition, most of these studies include an evaluative component such as stakeholder perspectives in relation to how practice aligns with the service approach and patients' experiences of service.…”

Key features of an innovative sub-acute residential service for young people experiencing mental ill health

“…Nevertheless, fragmentation and lack of coordination of mental health care are ongoing service system issues [16]. Researchers have argued that ‘sub-acute’ residential programs are needed to fill an important gap in the system [17, 18], providing more intensive support than the community (‘step-up’ care) and assisting with transitions back into the community following hospital admission (‘step-down’) [19].…”

“…Provision of sub-acute residential services for adults has become increasingly common in Australia [17, 20, 21]. Recovery-oriented models of care are embedded into many of these [19, 22–24]. Recovery-oriented mental health services are generally understood to feature the following: consideration of individual needs and wants; empowerment and promotion of self-care; embracing individual strengths and resilience; acknowledgment that the path to recovery is unique and varied; enabling those affected to benefit from one another; and promoting greater acceptance of people with mental health issues in the community [22, 23, 25–27].…”

Evaluación de la Recuperación en Enfermedad Mental Grave: Baremos, Puntos de Corte y Criterios de Valoración del REE (Recovery Enhancing Environment) para Casos Individuales

“…REE ya ha sido utilizado en otros países (Ayres et al, 2015;Basse t al., 2014;Knudsen & Wingenfeld, 2016;Thomas & Rickwood, 2016), pero sólo recientemente ha sido adaptado al castellano (Uriarte et al, 2020) y estudiado su comportamiento psicométrico que le confiere adecuación de medida y utilidad para la valoración del constructo de recuperación psiquiátrica, lo que lo convierte en un instrumento adecuado y útil para su utilización en este entorno. Sin embargo, aún no han sido publicados los datos de referencia que permitan conocer la respuesta de los usuarios.…”