The welcome basket revisited: Testing the feasibility of a brief peer support intervention to facilitate transition from hospital to community.

Abstract

These findings suggest that this brief transitional intervention is feasible and promising, although further investigation is warranted. Study findings also support the need for transitional interventions to address the service disconnects at the time of discharge for people with severe mental illness. (PsycINFO Database Record

Effectiveness of Transitional Interventions in Improving Patient Outcomes and Service Use After Discharge From Psychiatric Inpatient Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Predischarge interventions included components from case management, such as needs assessments (28,29,32,34,35,(40)(41)(42)(43), discharge or care planning (e.g., crisis planning) (28,31,35), scheduling or preparing for follow-up appointments (39,42), and family or carer involvement (28,44); psychoeducational components, such as individualized psychoeducation (33) and medication reconciliation elements (29,44); and elements of CBT, such as skills training (29,40,41,44) and peer support (38,43). Interventions were delivered in one-to-one sessions, except for the study conducted by Khaleghparast et al (41), where a family member was present and in Noda et al (44), where skills training was delivered in groups.…”

“…Elements of CBT consisted of therapeutic meetings with staff (30, 37) and skills training (33,40,41,44). In addition, interventions included psychoeducation and counseling (31) or peer support (30,37,38,43). Peer support consisted of facilitating access to local communities, promoting friendship, providing basic necessities, understanding, and encouragement.…”

“…Assistance from inpatient units ended after the patient was discharged, except in the study by Cuffel et al (39). Finally, three studies did not specify treatment as usual (30,34,41) and an additional three studies did not apply a control group design (42)(43)(44).…”

“…The nonrandomized study by Khaleghparast et al (41) demonstrated significant improvements in all outcome measures (i.e., readmission, symptom severity, and knowledge) in patients with psychosis or schizophrenia. Cohort studies with a one group design showed significant improvements in readmission (44), quality of life (43), functioning (43), social support, and engagement in community (43). All studies with significant effects in at least one outcome provided elements of case management (29,32,33,41,43,44), most frequently in combination with CBT and psychoeducation (29,33,44) or exclusively CBT (41), or peer support (43).…”

Interventions to Improve Discharge from Acute Adult Mental Health Inpatient Care to the Community: Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis

“…There were some interventions included in the review that did not fit within the aforementioned primary categories, these groups had 3 or fewer studies, see table 2. These were categorised as pharmacy interventions [11,12] (medications focused interventions led by pharmacists), needsorientated discharge planning [44,49] (discharge planning interventions led by the needs of individuals), intervention to prevent homelessness (an intervention developed by Forchuk et al [10,50] focused only on homeless individuals), transitional care model (a nurse-based in home initiative) [51,52], whole care pathway initiatives [53,54] (that consider multiple agencies in the care pathway) and multi-component models [55][56][57] (using multiple interventions simultaneously). Despite studies reporting on these interventions they tended to be single instances and do not provide sufficient evidence for narrative synthesis on a categorical level.…”