Mental Health - Adult Crisis and Acute Care
Mental health problems are the largest single cause of disability in the UK, with one in four adults experiencing at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any given year.
Adult crisis and acute mental health services encompass the care, treatment and rehabilitation of adults with severe mental illness as part of wider health and social system responses. The services cover both urgent and emergency care and planned care.
The GIRFT national report presents 17 recommendations to improve services and reduce variation. A key focus is on developing well-managed patient flows through the crisis pathway and between services, to ensuring people receive the right treatment at the right time. These measures can help to significantly reduce the risk of people reaching severe or crisis state, as well as reducing the number of people needing inpatient admission.
- Mental Health - Adult Crisis and Acute Care Clinical Lead

Dr Ian Davidson
Mental Health – Adult Crisis and Acute Care Clinical Lead
Dr Ian Davidson is a consultant general adult psychiatrist at Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust with extensive experience of community and inpatient general psychiatry. He has been a medical director, deputy chief executive and interim chief executive, among other leadership and management roles.
He has held a variety of regional and national roles and has a background in research, education and national quality and improvement services. He has also contributed to national policies, always alongside continuing clinical roles.
Dr Davidson has presented nationally and internationally on a range of topics, including care pathway development and evaluation. He has contributed as an external expert to a wide range of serious untoward incident reviews and service reviews.
Dr Davidson’s service development work has included helping design and commission a new hospital and procuring and implementing clinical IT systems, as well as care pathways. He has been, and remains, a long term advocate for ensuring that people who access services, deliver services or are affected by services are able to help shape and review services through their development.
Useful resources
Working developments (June 2023)
We are actively working with trusts, ICBs, regions (e.g., London, North West and East of England) and other national teams to ensure the whole pathway links up to deliver timely, effective interventions to all sections of the community. This includes from access and elective community interventions, to preventing & reducing the number of people needing to be in crisis to be ‘heard’, whilst improving the options available for those who do reach crisis point, and for those for whom timely inpatient care and treatment is necessary and the right therapeutic option.
We are offering data informed support to systems in improving care pathways, including reducing long lengths of stay and therefore reducing bed occupancy; hence reducing need for long term beds of any type and reducing out of area bed usage.
For more information or to request support from the GIRFT team please contact workstream delivery manager Suzannah at suzannah.davies1@nhs.net.
- GIRFT adult crisis & acute mental health key metrics – view
- NHS England Data Dashboards:
https://future.nhs.uk/MHRH/view?objectId=26200112 - MHA dashboard
https://future.nhs.uk/MHRH/view?objectId=33565328
- All age MH UEC dashboard:
https://future.nhs.uk/MHRH/view?objectId=37883504 - NHSE Adult mental health programme hub:
https://future.nhs.uk/MHRH/view?objectId=25564880 - Making Data Count:
making-data-count-getting-started-2019.pdf (england.nhs.uk) - Summary Emergency Department Indicator Table (SEDIT):
SEDIT – Getting It Right First Time – GIRFT
- 25th April 2023:
Making best use of data to improve adult crisis and acute care mental health services - 25th January 2023:
GIRFT adult crisis and acute care mental health webinar: Getting it right for older adults - 7th December 2021: Using the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) report for adult crisis and acute mental health services to improve care
- 5th November 2021:
Housing in the adult crisis and acute mental health pathway
- NHSE Adult acute mental health webinars: https://future.nhs.uk/AdultMH/view?objectID=32438352
- 21st March 2023: Multi-agency discharge events (MADE) for MH
- 6th March 2023: Partnership working MH and the police
- 27th January 2023: NHSE/I Policy team draft Acute MH inpatient guidance
- 27th April: Enabling Peer Support in Mental Health Services for Older Adults Webinar
OAMH Webinars April 2023 – Lived Experience / Peer Support – NHS England National Adult and Older Adult Mental Health Programme – FutureNHS Collaboration Platform
- Community mental health framework for adults and older adults:
community-mental-health-framework-for-adults-and-older-adults.pdf (england.nhs.uk) - NHS Long Term Plan:
NHS Long Term Plan v1.2 August 2019 - NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan:
NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20 – 2023/24 (longtermplan.nhs.uk) - Adult acute out of area placements:
Out of Area Placements (OAPs) – NHS Digital - NICE guidance – Service user experience in adult mental health:
Overview | Service user experience in adult mental health: improving the experience of care for people using adult NHS mental health services | Guidance | NICE - NICE guidance: Transition between inpatient mental health settings and community or care home settings:
Overview | Transition between inpatient mental health settings and community or care home settings | Guidance | NICE - NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan:
NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20 – 2023/24 (longtermplan.nhs.uk) - Adult acute out of area placements:
Out of Area Placements (OAPs) – NHS Digital - 100 day challenge:
100 day discharge challenge – Improvement – NHS Transformation Directorate (england.nhs.uk)
NHS England has published guidance on acute inpatient mental health care for adults and older adults. NHS England » Acute inpatient mental health care for adults and older adults seeks to support the delivery of the ambitions for therapeutic acute inpatient care outlined in the NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan, and a sustainable approach to managing local system capacity. The guidance will also support future work on improving the quality of inpatient mental health care, led by the Quality Transformation Programme.
- Summary of National Report Findings
GIRFT national report for mental health crisis and acute care focuses on reducing barriers to access
Providing the right treatment at the right time reduces the risk of people reaching severe or crisis state, says a new national report into adult mental health.
The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme’s latest national report has reviewed adult crisis and acute mental health care, looking at how services are delivered and who is delivering them with the aim of ensuring that patients receive the appropriate level of treatment in a timely way to avoid mental health conditions becoming more chronic and difficult to treat.
Mental health care is overwhelmingly community based, playing a crucial role in delivering mental health care for adults as close to home as possible. Further recommendations call for improvements to data collection methods to support trusts in being able to identify the most vulnerable in their population – and target resources and interventions to improve equality of access.
Find out more about GIRFT’s data-led approach and best practice resources:
- Mental Health – Adult Crisis and Acute Care National Report
Watch the video about the Mental Health – Adult Crisis and Acute Care report…
Click above to play the Mental Health Adult Crisis and Acute Care national report video
- Mental Health – Adult Crisis and Acute Care News