Crisis resolution and home treatment (CRHT), also referred to as the home treatment team (HTT), is a key service that provides home-based care as an alternative to acute admission.
CRHT offers intensive, short-term support for individuals experiencing an acute mental health crisis. This service provides an alternative to hospital admission by delivering care directly in the person’s home, promoting recovery in a familiar and less restrictive environment.
In this module, the term CRHT is used as it best represents the core objectives of the service – resolving mental health crises while enabling individuals to remain in their communities. The term emphasises the team’s focus on both immediate crisis intervention and the provision of comprehensive home-based treatment, making it the most relevant descriptor for this approach.
CRHT services are central to the functioning of the acute mental healthcare pathway. CRHT serves three main functions:
- crisis resolution and treatment at home or in the community as an alternative to in-patient care, to reduce both the number and length of hospital admissions and to ease the pressure on in-patient units
- 24-hour gatekeeping of in-patient beds
- facilitating early discharge from acute in-patient care to CRHT.
This module begins with a look at alternatives to acute admission in adult general psychiatry. It investigates the following questions:
- Why might alternatives be necessary?
- What alternatives are possible?
- When is acute in-patient care still needed?
The module then sets out the main structures and functions of a CRHT team.
Learning objectives
By the end of this module you should be able to:
- recognise acute care as a set of alternatives
- achieve greater specificity for the ‘need to admit’
- develop appropriate acute in-patient care
- ensure key success factors for crisis resolution and home treatment
- develop your service cost-effectiveness.
Availability
This module is available as part of a CPD eLearning subscription.
