Crisis Intervention and Home Treatment in Mental Health Services

Crisis intervention and home treatment services represent a paradigm shift in acute mental healthcare, offering intensive, community-based support as an alternative to inpatient admission. These services are typically delivered by multidisciplinary teams—including psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and occupational therapists—who provide rapid assessments, therapeutic interventions and practical support within the service user’s home environment. By facilitating early engagement, reducing reliance on hospital beds and promoting recovery in familiar surroundings, crisis resolution teams and home treatment teams address both clinical and social determinants of crisis, such as housing instability, social isolation and access to medication. Globally, these models have been adopted in diverse health systems, demonstrating reductions in hospital admissions, shorter lengths of stay when admission occurs and high satisfaction among service users and carers. Practical applications include gate-keeping functions for emergency departments, coordination with primary care and integration with community rehabilitation programmes. Challenges remain in ensuring continuity of care, maintaining staff continuity, tailoring interventions to complex presentations and embedding fidelity to best-practice models. Ongoing service improvement initiatives emphasise the need for consistent opening hours, robust training, carer involvement and mechanisms to monitor outcomes, thereby strengthening resilience and supporting recovery pathways outside hospital settings.

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Crisis Intervention and Home Treatment in Mental Health Services publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in crisis intervention and home treatment in mental health services across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Crisis Resolution Team (CRT): A multidisciplinary service delivering urgent, short-term, home-based care to individuals experiencing an acute mental health crisis, aiming to prevent or reduce hospital admission.

Model Fidelity: The extent to which a service or intervention adheres to the core components and procedures defined in a best-practice model.

Patient-Reported Outcome: A direct report from the service user on health status, symptoms or quality of life, without interpretation by clinicians.

Thematic Synthesis: A qualitative review method that integrates findings from multiple studies by identifying and analysing common themes across them.

References

1. Implementation of a crisis resolution team service improvement programme: a qualitative study of the critical ingredients for success. International Journal of Mental Health Systems (2024).
2. Patient-reported outcome, clinician-reported outcome, and patient satisfaction with treatment by crisis resolution teams: a multicenter pre-post study of outcome and associated factors in Norway. BMC Psychiatry (2024).
3. Patient experiences of crisis home treatment teams: a systematic review and thematic synthesis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (2025).