At the heart of an early psychosis centre: the core components of the 2014 Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre model for Australian communities

Abstract

The Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre comprises three elements of service provision for young people experiencing a first episode of psychosis: (i) early detection; (ii) acute care during and immediately following a crisis; (iii) recovery-focused continuing care, featuring multimodal interventions to enable the young person to maintain or regain their social, academic and/or career trajectory during the critical first 2-5 years following the onset of a psychotic illness. It does this via a combination of 16 core components, which provide a flexible, comprehensive, integrated service that is able to respond quickly, appropriately and consistently to the individual needs of the young person and their family. Innovative service reforms, such as Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre, that recognise the value of early intervention are crucial to reducing the impact of serious mental illness on young people and their families and, ultimately, on our society.

Development of an implementation guide to facilitate the roll‐out of early intervention services for psychosis

“…As this early intervention focus has developed, both the concept of early intervention and specific interventions within the concept have been evaluated. The outcome of this body of work is an early intervention, youth focused model of comprehensive care that ensures early detection of those at risk of developing a first‐episode psychosis or who have experienced a first‐episode psychosis, which prevents transition to a full‐threshold psychosis in those young people who are at risk of developing a first‐episode psychosis and to provide effective early intervention to those who have a first episode of psychosis to provide recovery from symptoms, pre‐empt or minimize disability and restore the normal developmental and functional trajectory (Hughes et al, ).…”

From early intervention in psychosis to youth mental health reform: a review of the evolution and transformation of mental health services for young people

“…To begin to address this need, the Australian Government has funded the creation of up to nine 'enhanced headspace' services (hYEPPs: headspace Youth Early Psychosis Programs), which are resourced to deliver evidence-based early psychosis services, offering early detection, acute care during an initial psychotic episode, and recovery-focused continuing care featuring multimodal interventions to support the young person (and their family) to maintain or regain their social, academic and/or career trajectory during the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 critical first 2-5 years following the onset of a psychotic illness [27]. The first of these enhanced services commenced operation in 2013, and it is hoped that ultimately they will be expanded to cover not only all headspace communities, but also the full diagnostic spectrum in young people with all the severe forms of mental illness.…”

Early Detection of Psychosis: Recent Updates from Clinical High-Risk Research

“…From a clinical standpoint, delays in obtaining access to care also present a substantial obstacle to receiving accurate early diagnosis and treatment. Future work must also continue focusing on improving functioning and symptom reduction via more comprehensive and multimodal wrap-around services [1, 66, 81], and including empirically supported treatments for schizophrenia such as psychosocial therapy and mindfulness interventions [82–85]. Given observed progressive declines in global cognitive function in patient with schizophrenia over time [86], increased participation in cognitive remediation training programs [87–89] and/or cognitive control programs [90] may be additionally useful.…”