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Community Mental Health Teams: Interacting Groups of Citizen-Agent?

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Mental Health Uncertainty and Inevitability

Abstract

Community mental health teams (CMHTs) are a core feature of mental health services. They comprise employees (of the NHS in the UK and other organisations elsewhere) providing for clients in a variety of settings. Although these teams and their activities are formally overseen and audited, there is little understanding of how their members conduct themselves, what they see their goals to be and how these are achieved. This is a significant and strategic research need and opportunity. Findings of relevant investigations are reviewed. Clients and practitioners concur that a critical component of CMHTs’ work is the building and maintenance of supportive relationships. This occurs alongside more formally defined activities, and allows interpretation of this work as an example of street-level bureaucracy. The work of CMHTs might be best understood as a form of enabled citizenship offering additional insight into tensions between formal bureaucracies and intuitive, humanitarian concerns.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This situation confronted the author when he took up an NHS consultant psychiatrist post in 1994. The nurse in question was disciplined and lost their registration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Hugh Middleton

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  1. Hugh Middleton
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  1. School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Hugh Middleton

  2. School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Melanie Jordan

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Middleton, H. (2017). Community Mental Health Teams: Interacting Groups of Citizen-Agent?. In: Middleton, H., Jordan, M. (eds) Mental Health Uncertainty and Inevitability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43970-9_7

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