Brief Admission for Patients with Self-Harm from the Perspective of Outpatient Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

The aim of the study was to describe the role of brief-admission (BA) in treating high-risk patients with self-harm from the perspective of outpatient healthcare staff in Sweden. Ten outpatient healthcare professionals from three psychiatric clinics were interviewed. Data were analyzed using a conventional content analysis. The findings of this study help support the role of BA as an acute crisis management intervention, and describe how BA serves as a useful adjunct to outpatient treatment, especially for patients with complementarily psychotherapeutic interventions. The findings also suggest that implementing BA may increase treatment opportunities for outpatient staff and strengthen the concept of person-centered care.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to the outpatient staff in this southern Swedish region, who participated in this study and were generous in contributing their knowledge and perspective during the interviews. Also thanks to Anchor English for proofreading the paper.

Conflicts of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Disclosure

The authors have confirmed that all authors meet the International committee of medical journal editors criterias for authorship credit (www.icmje.org) as follows: (1) substantial contributions to the conception and design of or acquisition of data or the analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and (3) final approval of the version to be published.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg and Department of Psychiatry, Region Jönköping County.