Comparison of a community and a hospital based psychiatric crisis service

Purpose: The need for psychiatric crisis services is generally accepted. Ad ditional to traditional crisis clinics which are located in general or psyc hiatric hospitals in recent years also special community crisis services we re implemented. The question is whether there are differences in patients a nd type of care between traditional and new services. Methods: In this stud y empirical data are reported on reasons for contact, on patients and on in terventions for a hospital based crisis clinic and a community crisis servi ce. 132 service and 364 clinic contacts were recorded. Results: There were more neuro-tic patients in the community service and more psychotic patient s in the clinic. In both services inpatient care had to be arranged in one third of the cases. In the hospital based crisis service fewer legal commit ments were necessary. A speciality of the community crisis service is the p ossibility to look after patients in their homes. Conclusion: Both services have similar features, but there are also differences which show that the new service offers new possibilities of care.