Crisis Team

The “Crisis Team” is a team that has been trained to treat acute severe mental health crisis and to prevent psychiatric hospitalization, and includes professionals from the fields of psychiatry, nursing and social work. If necessary, professionals from other mental health disciplines may be included. Their main objective is to stabilize the patient’s condition and prevent psychiatric hospitalization through disease management, minimizing the indirect negative repercussions of the disorder, promoting daily social and employment function and promoting recovery.

When the crisis team is operated

The referral to the crisis team is issued by the mental health therapist in the HMO when he believes that there is a significant decline in the patient’s mental state that can be treated with the help of a targeted and intense response within a short period of time of one month in the patient’s home, thereby preventing his hospitalization.

When there is no mental health therapist, it is important to urgently contact a family physician to help with a referral to mental health professionals, who will recommend the request of the crisis team or other intensive treatment, in accordance with the professional assessment.

The difference between a crisis team and referral to a psychiatric Emergency Room

While the emergency room does not stabilize the mental health condition but determines whether the patient is eligible for hospitalization, the crisis team provides targeted and rapid therapy. The team operates when there is a significant deterioration in mental health, provides a targeted response, supervises the patient for a month, provides the patient and family with tools and helps with therapeutic recommendations for the future.

• The team responds to referrals received within 24 hours (on weekdays), during which an assessment is made on whether the service is suitable for the patient’s needs. If necessary, a telephone investigation will be carried out with the referring party and with the patient or family members.
• If the service is found to be suitable for the patient, he will receive therapy at a frequency of up to 3 visits per month.

Team coping with dangerous situations or violence

In situations in which the patient is a danger to himself or to others, or in other situations that require medical supervision 24/7, the crisis team will refer the patient to the emergency room.

The crisis team in the mental health services system

The crisis team integrates in the therapeutic services in mental health that are tangential to hospitalization alternatives. In contrast with ACT Assertive Community Treatment, which is intensive long-term therapy for patients coping with severe mental health disability, the crisis team service is designed for initial targeted intervention in acute situations. Following this intervention, clinic therapy or a referral for outpatient treatment or a hospitalization alternative such as a balancing home or home hospitalization may be considered. In serious cases, the team will refer to full hospitalization in a psychiatric ward.

Support of families of patients

Mental health therapy, particularly in acute situations, includes treatment of the patient and immediate surroundings, particularly when the therapy is provided at his place of residence. As part of its role, the crisis team educates, supervises, supports and provides the family with tools to cope with an acute crisis and to jointly examine the best path for them - as a family - in long-term coping with the mental disorder.