NHS to deploy street mental health teams to help England’s rough sleepers | Homelessness | The Guardian

9 comments
  1. How do they even have the capacity for that given the waiting list to see mental health professionals is so long? Not saying it’s a bad thing obviously but a perplexing.

  2. In America the police service is the last-resort which has to pick up the pieces when society fails someone. Its why they’re called to deal with mental health crises and social services issues when they’re totally inappropriate. Its the reason behind “defund the police”.

    In the UK, the NHS fulfils the same role. A&E is always there. And for a lot of the problems, the NHS isn’t the appropriate service either.

    I’m not saying “defund the NHS”, god knows the tories are trying that. But this shouldn’t be NHS work, it should be social workers and council-funded specialists. NHS should provide support services for addiction and mental health, but not like this.

  3. I’m in two minds on this. On the one hand you seem a bit of a **** to argue against this and it’s likely to do some good, on the other, people are dying by suicide while on waiting lists for services or just being denied due to capacity and we’re just giving a fast lane to see Psychiatrists that isn’t based on clinical need?

  4. Just give them the home / money they need. Mental health will improve as a by product.

    There still needs to be mental health services, but much of it is caused by external influences that can and should be solved by the state.

  5. It will be good for short-term interventions in an emergency but the long-term picture will not be great unless those with the most severe issues can get access to a long-term healthcare plan that will see them get clean and help manage their mental health issues. When people who are not homeless cannot get that treatment, homeless people will suffer the same fate.

  6. Mixed feelings about this. I can imagine that a street mental health team will be a pretty good move to do some of the first steps, such as engagement, assessment, formulation and signposting. They are also likely to be better than untrained police, an overworked A+E system or well meaning but out of their depth members of the public.

    However, without the additional numbers of clinicians, a decent social services set up, and the lack of secondary and specialist services they won’t be able to do much beyond that. Homelessness is often at the nexus of several different conditions and unless theses street teams can somehow adddress social issues, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, addiction, trauma, medication, finance and physical health this isn’t really going to go anywhere.

    Probably the best way forward with homelessness would be using community psychology approaches rather than clinical ones. e.g. https://www.communitypsychology.com/what-is-community-psychology/

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