Acute Psychiatric Emergencies Advanced Life Support Group Series

Acute Psychiatric Emergencies is designed for all medical and healthcare professionals working with patients in mental health crisis. This manual is a key component of the Acute Psychiatric Emergencies (APEx) course, which uses a structured approach developed by leading psychiatry and emergency medicine specialists with years of practical experience. 

This valuable resource provides a practical approach for dealing with mental health emergencies, helping healthcare professionals from different specialties speak a common language and develop a shared understanding that expedites excellent care. The manual outlines the assessment and management of patients who have self-harmed, those that are apparently drunk, the patient behaving strangely, the patient with acute confusion, and those that are aggressive.

• Presents a structured, practical approach for the emergency care of patients presenting in acute psychiatric crisis
• Covers common presentations of psychiatric emergencies
• Emphasises close co-operation of emergency and mental health teams
• Offers content designed jointly by practicing psychiatrists and emergency physicians from the Advanced Life Support Group (ALSG)

Acute Psychiatric Emergencies will be useful for practitioners of emergency medicine, psychiatry, emergency and mental health nursing as well as other mental health and crisis care professionals.

Working group vi

Contributors viii

Foreword ix

Preface and acknowledgements xi

Contact details and website information xii

How to use your textbook xiii

1 Structured approach to acute psychiatric emergencies 1

2 Primary unified assessment and immediate psychiatric management 5

3 Secondary physical and psychosocial assessment 13

4 The patient who has harmed themselves 19

5 The apparently drunk patient 37

6 The patient behaving strangely 51

7 The acutely confused patient 63

8 The aggressive patient 75

9 Legal aspects of emergency psychiatry 91

10 Human factors 97

11 The patient experience 107

Index 111

Advanced Life Support Group (ALSG) improves outcomes for people in life-threatening situations, anywhere along the healthcare pathway, anywhere in the world. ALSG is a leading medical education charity and have delivered advanced life support training to over 225,000 clinicians in 44 countries, across 5 continents, for over 25 years.