Early Intervention in Psychosis Team – Gateshead – CNTW212

The Early Intervention in Psychosis service works with people who are experiencing a first episode of psychosis and their families.

Research has shown that if someone receives support and treatment quickly then they are less likely to have further episodes of psychosis.

We can provide intensive support for up to three years for anyone who is aged 14 to 35 on entry to the service and up to 18 months for those over the age of 36 when they first come into contact with the service.

The support you receive from the service can help you to recover from your psychotic episode. It can also help to reduce the chances of experiencing further psychotic episodes in the future.

What does the service offer?

We believe that people can recover from psychosis. A core part of our team’s work is to try to help people achieve meaningful recovery.

The aims of the EIP service are to:

• Reduce distressing symptoms of psychosis
• Improve the outcome and quality of life for people who have experienced a psychosis episode
• Help people to get back into work, education and meaningful activity
• Help service users and carers get involved in our service to help improve what we do

Interventions could include:

The team can offer a variety of different interventions and support systems, such as:

• Working with people in overcoming any difficulties that they might have
• Help developing understanding about symptoms
• Help developing new ways of coping
• Help developing daily living skills, like shopping and travelling on the metro
• Offer social and group activities, each team has a Support Worker to support people in these activities.
• Help accessing education or employment/voluntary work, we have an Individual Placement Specialist (IPS) who supports people wanting employment and those already in employment to retain this.
• We offer family support, the majority of our team are trained in family behavioural therapy and each team has a dedicated family therapist.
• We offer psychological therapy, each team has a dedicated psychologist.
• Help with any medication needs. The team’s Psychiatrist works closely with GP surgeries.
• Physical health monitoring, we have a dedicated Assistant Practitioner, who completes annual monitoring and provides support/signposting for health living and lifestyle.

The model of care is based on the following evidence based practice:

​​​​​​​EIP uses a recovery focused approach, looking at the individual’s biopsychosocial and spiritual needs. In 2011, No Health Without Mental Health highlighted the effectiveness of EIP services for people experiencing first episode psychosis.

“There is good evidence that EIP services help people to recover and to gain a good quality of life. EIP services have demonstrated that they can significantly reduce the rate of relapse, risk of suicide and number of hospital admissions. EIP is cost-effective and improve employment, education and wellbeing outcomes.” NICE (2016)
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence: Implementing the Early Intervention in Psychosis Access and Waiting Time Standard: Guidance (2016).

How to get referred
Referrals are accepted from a number of sources, which include GPs, Primary Care Networks, Community Treatment Teams (CTT) and/or the Crisis Teams. We also accept referrals from inpatient settings, probation and Social Services. Referral email: [email protected]