Resources

Trauma-Informed, Compassionate Crisis and Inpatient Care For Adults with Complex Emotional Needs

Authors: Charlotte Riches, Stuart Mitchell, Amy Ashton

This book offers practical suggestions for how to grow a regenerative, trauma-informed culture and approach within acute mental health services, starting with a compassionate exploration of the challenges faced. It considers the ways in which individuals and services may have adapted to cope, and what this means for patient care and staff wellbeing.  

The clinical areas covered include safety planning, crisis care, hospital admission, ward-based intervention, and discharge, with an overarching focus on attachment- and trauma-informed care, mentalizing, and compassion. Several therapeutic models, including dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), and mentalization-based therapy (MBT), are drawn upon and applied to clinical examples. Readers will also find lived experience comments, core concept boxes, reflective prompts and summaries throughout the book.