.png)
“Are we talking about discharge
right now?!”
“Well it has to happen eventually!”
After my recent mental health crisis, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust’s Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team carried out an assessment at my home and I was admitted to their caseload. From the offset, the plan was that I’d be with them until Tuesday (today!) when my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) returned to work and they would have a discussion to review whether I still needed to be on caseload and it’s made me think about the subject of discharge in mental health…
CLARITY
I’ll be honest, that first year of me being poorly is a bit of a blur; but I do remember that my first admission to a psychiatric hospital was the epitome of confusing and scary. I hadn’t long turned 18 so I was admitted straight into an adult ward and having had no contact with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), I had no understanding of anything mental health - including the Act of law that I was being detained under (Section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983)! To be fair, I think that everyone was so busy being worried about me that they didn’t have the time to explain anything and inevitably, after two weeks, no one explained the discharge process either. I didn’t know that after being sectioned you have to be allocated a CPN in a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) and I didn’t know what that even meant - what it would entail.