Connor, C;
Birchwood, M;
Freemantle, N;
Palmer, C;
Channa, S;
Barker, C;
Patterson, P;
(2016)
Don't turn your back on the symptoms of psychosis: the results of a proof-of-principle, quasi-experimental intervention to reduce duration of untreated psychosis.
BMC Psychiatry
, 16
, Article 127. 10.1186/s12888-016-0816-7.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: No evidence based approach to reduce duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) has been effective in the UK. Existing interventions have many components and have been difficult to replicate. The majority of DUP in Birmingham, UK is accounted for by delays within mental health services (MHS) followed by help-seeking delay and, we hypothesise, these require explicit targeting. This study examined the feasibility and impact of an intervention to reduce DUP, targeting help-seeking and MHSs delays. METHODS: A dual-component intervention, comprising a direct care pathway, for 16-25 year olds, and a community psychosis awareness campaign, using our youth-friendly website as the central hub, was implemented, targeting the primary sources of care pathway delays experienced by those with long DUP. Evaluation, using a quasi-experimental, design compared DUP of cases in two areas of the city receiving early detection vs detection as usual, controlling for baseline DUP in each area. RESULTS: DUP in the intervention area was reduced from a median 71 days (mean 285) to 39 days (mean 104) following the intervention, with no change in the control area. Relative risk for the reduction in DUP was 0.74 (95 % CI 0.35 to 0.89; p = .004). Delays in MHSs and help-seeking were also reduced. CONCLUSIONS: Our targeted approach appears to be successful in reducing DUP and could provide a generalizable methodology applicable in a variety of healthcare contexts with differing sources of delay. More research is needed, however, to establish whether our approach is truly effective. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN45058713 - 30 December 2012.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Don't turn your back on the symptoms of psychosis: the results of a proof-of-principle, quasi-experimental intervention to reduce duration of untreated psychosis |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12888-016-0816-7 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-016-0816-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2016 Connor et al. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Psychiatry, 1st Episode Psychosis, 1st-episode Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Impact, Predictors, Pathways, Care, DUP |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology > Comprehensive CTU at UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1509449 |
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