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Birmingham community mental health team for the homeless

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Martin Commander ,
Sue Odell  and
Sashi Sashidharan
Martin Commander*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Sue Odell
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Northern Birmingham Mental Health (NHS) Trust, Academic Unit, 71 Fentham Road, Erdington, Birmingham B23 6AL
Sashi Sashidharan
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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Mental health services have been criticised for failing to respond to the needs of the rising number of homeless mentally ill. We report on the first year of referrals to a community mental health team established to meet the needs of the severely mentally ill homeless in Birmingham. Most users had a psychotic disorder and a lengthy history of unstable housing, and experienced a range of other disadvantages. Although the team is successfully reaching its priority group, examination of other characteristics of users has highlighted a number of issues which should inform the future planning and development of the service.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , February 1997 , pp. 74 - 76
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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