BMJ  2004;329:136 (17 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.38155.585046.63 (published 7 July 2004)

Paper

Effect of joint crisis plans on use of compulsory treatment in psychiatry: single blind randomised controlled trial

¹ Health Services Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, ² South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, Croydon CR0 1XT, ³ Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London

Abstract

Objective To investigate whether a form of advance agreement for people with severe mental illness can reduce the use of inpatient services and compulsory admission or treatment.

Design Single blind randomised controlled trial, with randomisation of individual patients. The investigator was blind to allocation.

Setting Eight community mental health teams in southern England.

Participants 160 people with an operational diagnosis of psychotic illness or non-psychotic bipolar disorder who had experienced a hospital admission within the previous two years.

Intervention The joint crisis plan was formulated by the patient, care coordinator, psychiatrist, and project worker and contained contact information, details of mental and physical illnesses, treatments, indicators for relapse, and advance statements of preferences for care in the event of future relapse.

Main outcome measures Admission to hospital, bed days, and use of the Mental Health Act over 15 month follow up.

Results Use of the Mental Health Act was significantly reduced for the intervention group, 13% (10/80) of whom experienced compulsory admission or treatment compared with 27% (21/80) of the control group (risk ratio 0.48, 95% confidence interval 0.24 to 0.95, P = 0.028). As a consequence, the mean number of days of detention (days spent as an inpatient while under a section of the Mental Health Act) for the whole intervention group was 14 compared with 31 for the control group (difference 16, 0 to 36, P = 0.04). For those admitted under a section of the Mental Health Act, the number of days of detention was similar in the two groups (means 114 and 117, difference 3, -61 to 67, P = 0.98). The intervention group had fewer admissions (risk ratio 0.69, 0.45 to 1.04, P = 0.07). There was no evidence for differences in bed days (total number of days spent as an inpatient) (means 32 and 36, difference 4, -18 to 26, P = 0.15 for the whole sample; means 107 and 83, difference -24, -72 to 24, P = 0.39 for those admitted).

Conclusions Use of joint crisis plans reduced compulsory admissions and treatment in patients with severe mental illness. The reduction in overall admission was less. This is the first structured clinical intervention that seems to reduce compulsory admission and treatment in mental health services.

Introduction

For patients receiving psychiatric treatment a joint crisis plan aims to empower the holder and to facilitate detection and treatment of relapse.¹ It is developed by a patient together with mental health staff. Held by the patient, it contains his or her choice of information, which can include an advance agreement for treatment preferences for any future emergency, when he or she might be too unwell to express coherent views.

The format was developed after consultation with national user groups, interviews with organisations and individuals using crisis cards,² and detailed development work with service users in south London.

Use of the Mental Health Act has increased in English mental health services. Data returned to the Department of Health³ show a 57% increase in civil cases of compulsory detention under the Mental Health Act 1983 between 1988 and 1998.³ Legal detention can have serious negative consequences for patients, including restricted access to travel visas and financial services. Current policy in England is towards greater involvement of patients as partners in care.^{4 5} In the review of the Mental Health Act 1983, the Legislation Scoping Study Committee referred to the desirability of reducing compulsory treatment through the use of advance agreements; in the context of new mental health legislation to be introduced "the creation and recognition of advance agreements about care would greatly assist in the promotion of informal and consensual care."⁶

We evaluated the effectiveness of joint crisis plans at reducing use of inpatient services and objective coercion at and during admission.

Methods

Setting and participants
We recruited patients in 2000 and 2001 from seven community mental health teams in south London and one in Kent.

To be eligible, patients had to be in contact with their local team; have been admitted to a psychiatric inpatient service at least once in the previous two years; and have a diagnosis of psychotic illness or bipolar affective disorder without psychotic symptoms. We excluded those unable to give informed consent because of mental incapacity or insufficient command of English. Current inpatients were not recruited to avoid any coercion to participate.

Study procedures
We used minimisation to allocate patients to the intervention or the control group (see bmj.com). The nature of the interventions meant that neither participants nor staff could be blinded to allocation. The outcome assessor, however, was blinded to the intervention.

Intervention group—At the first meeting the project worker (CF) explained the procedure to the patient and, if possible, the care coordinator. To finalise each plan, the patient was encouraged to bring a carer, friend, or advocate to a second meeting. This meeting was to discuss the views of patients and professionals on what to do in a crisis and to negotiate agreed solutions. The selection of information to include and the exact wording were the patient's choice alone. Full details of how plans were produced are given in reports of our pilot study.^{1 2}

Control group—Patients in the control group received information leaflets about local services, mental illness and treatments, the Mental Health Act, local provider organisations, and relevant policies. In accordance with standard practice in England, all patients received written copies of their care plan, within the care programme approach.⁷

Baseline and outcome measures—We collected data on sociodemographic variables, clinical details, history of adverse events—for instance, self harm and harm to others, and compliance with mental health treatment, rated by the care coordinator on a 7 point rating scale.⁸ Our primary outcomes were admission to hospital and length of time spent in hospital. Our secondary outcome was objective coercion—that is, compulsory treatment under the Mental Health Act 1983. Follow up was conducted 15 months after randomisation.

Results

Participants
We assessed 466 sets of case notes for eligibility. Twenty three people did not meet the inclusion criteria and 282 were either not contacted or declined to take part; we therefore randomised 160. During follow up there were fewer adverse outcomes in the intervention group; we shall be addressing this fully in a future paper (table 1). Baseline sociodemographic and clinical features were similar (table 2).

View this table: [in this window] [in a new window]   Table 1 Adverse events in psychiatric patients randomised to receive joint crisis plan (intervention) or standard treatment (control). Figures are numbers (percentages) of patients

 

View this table: [in this window] [in a new window]   Table 2 Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of participant groups. Figures are numbers (percentages) unless stated otherwise

 

Hospital admissions
A smaller proportion of the intervention group were admitted (risk ratio 0.69, 95% confidence interval 0.45 to 1.04) (table 3). There was no significant difference in mean bed days (difference 4, -18 to 26, P = 0.15, for the whole sample; difference -24, -72 to 24, P = 0.39, for those admitted). Overall about a quarter of patients were admitted for more than one month (23% in the intervention group and 29% in the control group).

View this table: [in this window] [in a new window]   Table 3 Hospital admission and use of the Mental Health Act 1983

 

Use of the Mental Health Act
Compulsory admission and treatment were significantly less common in the intervention group (risk ratio 0.48, 0.24 to 0.95, ² = 4.84, P = 0.03, table 3). The mean number of days of detention for the intervention group was 14 compared with 31 for the control group (difference 17, 0 to 36, P = 0.04). For those admitted on a section, the mean number of days on a section was similar in the two groups (difference 3, -61 to 67, P = 0.98).

Discussion

We have shown that a type of advance agreement significantly reduces use of the Mental Health Act both at and during hospital admission. Evidence that it can also reduce number of admissions was weaker, and there was no significant difference for number of bed days used.

Methodological considerations
This study has several important limitations. The rate of hospital admission among the control group was lower than expected from our pilot study, which reduced the power of the study to detect a difference in this outcome and resulted in wide confidence intervals for the mean differences in bed days, consistent with either an increase or a decrease in length of hospital stay. Only 36% of eligible patients agreed to participate, so the results may not be widely generalisable. Those who declined to participate when interviewed reported that the plan would not help them, they were unlikely to become ill again, that a plan was already in place, or that no one would take any notice of it. On the other hand, generalisability was strengthened by the various settings for recruitment (inner city, suburban, small town) and the broad ethnic representation of patients. The follow up rate for the outcomes reported was high.

Implications for services
The reduction in use of the Mental Health Act has important implications for mental health services. Although the provision of a written care plan, signed by the patient, is now required in England, the joint crisis plan is substantially different. Making a joint crisis plan is voluntary, while the standard care plan is a statutory requirement. Thus, joint crisis plans can be used only when staff and patients want to formulate and use them. Furthermore, a third party, with knowledge of severe mental health problems and who is not a team member, mediates between the parties in producing each joint crisis plan. Such facilitation requires extra resources. The joint crisis plan is therefore different from a self completed advance directive⁹ because it is fully agreed with staff, increasing the likelihood that it will be implemented.

What is known already on this topic The use of advance agreements and directives for mental health care are advocated by groups for service users and voluntary sector organisations but there has been no evidence for their effectiveness so far Rates of use of the Mental Health Act 1983 have been rising in England since it was introduced What this study adds An advance agreement made between staff and a person with a severe mental illness, negotiated by a third party, can lead to a considerable reduction in compulsory admission and treatment This is the first time that a structured clinical intervention has been shown to reduce compulsory admission and treatment in adult mental health services

Finally, the process of writing a joint crisis plan is deliberately one of negotiation. We intend to undertake further investigation in future to understand what such negotiation means for staff and patients, to explore the power relationships between staff and patients, and to investigate more fully other contextual factors which may impact on such a complex intervention.^9-14 We can find no other evidence in the literature that a structured clinical intervention can significantly reduce compulsory psychiatric admission and treatment. This study suggests that the committee reviewing the Mental Health Act 1983 was correct in its assertion that advance agreements can promote more consensual and less coercive care.⁶

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Editorial by Thomas and Cahill

The training pack for the development of a joint crisis plan can be found on bmj.com

This is the abridged version of an article that was posted on bmj.com on 7 July 2004: http://bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.38155.585046.63

We thank all participants, their informal carers, and care staff for their help in conducting the study.

Contributors: See bmj.com

Funding: CH was supported by a Medical Research Council health service research training fellowship, and CF was supported by a South London and Maudsley Trust health services research committee grant.

Competing interests: None declared.

Ethical approval: Ethics Committees of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, Lewisham University Hospital, South West London and St George's NHS Trust, and Thames Gateway NHS Trust.

References

1. Sutherby K, Szmukler GI, Halpern A, Alexander M, Thornicroft G, Johnson C, et al. A study of "crisis cards" in a community psychiatric service. Acta Psychiatr Scand 1999;100: 56-61.[Web of Science][Medline]
2. Sutherby K, Szmukler GI. Crisis cards and self-help crisis initiatives. Psychiatric Bulletin 1998;22: 4-7.
3. Department of Health. Inpatients formally detained in hospitals under the Mental Health Act 1983 and other legislation, England: 1988-89 to 1998-99. London: Government Statistical Service, 1999.
4. Department of Health. The national service framework for mental health. Modern standards and service models. London: Department of Health, 1999.
5. Department of Health. The NHS plan. London: Department of Health, 2000.
6. Department of Health. Report of the expert committee. Review of the Mental Health Act 1983. London: Stationery Office, 1999.
7. Department of Health. Effective care co-ordination in mental health services. Modernising the care programme approach. A policy booklet. London: Department of Health, 2000.
8. Kemp RA, Lambert TJ. Insight in schizophrenia and its relationship to psychopathology. Schizophr Res 1995;18: 21-8.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
9. Papageorgiou A, King M, Janmohamed A, Davidson O, Dawson J. Advance directives for patients compulsorily admitted to hospital with serious mental illness: randomised controlled trial. Br J Psychiatry 2002;181: 513-9.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
10. Campbell M, Fitzpatrick R, Haines A, Kinmonth AL, Sandercock P, Spiegelhalter D, et al. Framework for design and evaluation of complex interventions to improve health. BMJ 2000;321: 694-7.[Free Full Text]
11. Medical Research Council. A framework for development and evaluation ofRCTs for complex interventions to improve health. London: Medical Research Council, Health Services and Public Health Research Board, 2000.
12. Pawson R, Tilley N. Realistic evaluation. London: Sage Publications, 1997.
13. Thomas P. How should advance statements be implemented? (letter). Br J Psychiatry 2003;182: 548-9.[Free Full Text]
14. Bracken P, Thomas P. Postpsychiatry: a new direction for mental health. BMJ 2001;322: 724-7.[Free Full Text]

(Accepted 6 May 2004)

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