Mental Health Assessment Unit

What we do

• Provide 24-hour access to local emergency mental health assessments.
• Provide detailed mental health assessment, including mental health risk assessment, with appropriate treatment and follow-up arrangements. Clinical contact can be in person, by telephone or video consultation platforms.
• Provide mental health assessments to those from A&E departments, once any relevant physical health assessment and interventions have been completed. Assessments may be delayed by the patient’s capacity to participate or any pending medical investigations that are likely to be negative or affect medical admission.
• Crisis intervention - normally up to 72hrs for those patients assessed as being appropriately managed in the community, with intensive support to manage current illness and to enable community-based alternatives to hospital care.

How we do it

• Maintaining a recovery focus in all approaches and making appropriate use of each patient’s personal resources and strengths in every care and treatment plan.
• Recognising the continuum of mental health and developing crisis and relapse prevention plans with each patient at the earliest appropriate stage in the care and treatment process.
• Working with the patient's own social system in assessment, crisis resolution and longer-term care and treatment when appropriate and effective.
• Making appropriate and effective use of community resources in care and treatment plans.
• Liaising with other statutory and non-statutory service providers as appropriate in order to deliver an integrated service.
• Providing a range of interventions which reflect the patient's needs and preferences, and based upon best available evidence of effectiveness.
• Promoting the principles of recovery, personal responsibility, autonomy, and self-management.
• Avoiding contributing to harmful dependency on services by promoting autonomy and independence through a strengths-based approach and positive risk management.
• Engaging with members of the patient's social system, assessing their need for support as appropriate.

Who can refer someone to our service?

• GPs
• General Adult Community Mental Health Team
• Older Adult Community Mental Health Team
• Drug and Alcohol Recovery Service
• Police Scotland
• Scottish Ambulance Service
• forensic medical examiners
• A&E within general hospitals

NHS24

The NHS24 111 service provides urgent care and advice when GPs and community mental health teams are closed. Out-of-hours NHS24 mental health calls are embedded within MHAU. The Mental Health Liaison Team respond to NHS24 calls on the weekend and public holidays between 9am and 5pm.

Self-help toolkit

See the Decider Skills web app and other resources below.