Community Mental Health Teams

Tom Burns is Professor of Social Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. He was the consultant in charge of the Wandsworth Assertive Outreach Team - recognised as a centre of excellence in being awarded Beacon status by the Department of Health.

A book that provides a map of this brave new world should be valuable both for the experienced practitioner and the tyro. I cannot think of anyone better placed to write such a book than Tom Burns, now Professor of Social Psychiatry at Oxford, who has for many years been at the forefront of innovations in service delivery. In Community Mental Health Teams he has supplemented his considerable personal experience and knowledge of the literature with direct observation of mental health teams both in the UK and North America. The structure of the book is simple and the writing is clear. Chapters describing the four functional teams provide the core of the book: Burns underlines the commonalities between these teams as well as describing their differences. It provides all the information that an examination candidate should know, but like all good books this text raises more questions for the perceptive reader that it answers.

• 1. The origins of community psychiatry ; 2. Modern multidisciplinary mental health working ; 3. Generic adult CMHTs ; 4. Assertive outreach teams ; 5. Early intervention teams ; 6. Crisis resolution and home treatment teams ; 7. Highly specialised teams ; 8. The wider context and the research development agenda