 The Early Intervention Network
was launched at the General and Community Faculty 2009
conference.
As early intervention
services bed-down around the country and we learn more about
meeting the clinical needs of young people with first episode
psychotic disorders and their families a number of crucial areas of
uncertainty have emerged.
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These challenge many of our
traditional precepts and practices: They include:
- What outcomes should we aim for?
- How should the considerable physical health care needs of those
with psychotic illnesses best be met?
- How best to work across our professional boundaries of adult
and adolescent psychiatry when many patients are stuck,
developmentally, at this boundary?
- How to manage substance misuse and, in particular, the
under-acknowledged and under-researched problem of cannabis
dependence?
- Should the concept and principles of early intervention –
age-appropriate, specialist MDTs – be restricted to psychotic
illness? Is this ethical? What about EI for depression, OCD and
other anxiety disorders? Should we have EIP or just EI?
- How early is early? Beware of confusing intervention in people
thought to be at risk of psychosis with people who have an
established psychotic illness.
- How does EI with its emphasis on close observation of dynamic
phenomena during the early phase of evolution of psychotic illness
change our diagnostic boundaries and concepts?
The Faculty EI network,
convened by Peter Jones and Mark Agius, will be a forum for
exchange of ideas, debate and support. Mary Cannon and Jan Scott
will be speaking in our launch session at the conference with the
themes of How early is early? and EI for more than
psychosis, respectively.
Register
Members are encouraged to register their interest in the network
by dropping an email us so that we can
begin work before the conference and official launch. We welcome
debate on, but certainly not restricted to, the issues above, as
well as questions, advice, support and simply networking for those
involved in EI services.
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