Definitive Treatment of Patients with Serious Mental Disorders in an Emergency Service, Part II

For the psychiatric emergency service, the new role of providing definitive treatment can give staff a tangible sense of the benefits of good care. Patients who were seen as incurable return for follow-up with stable mood, resolved psychosis, and a new sense of optimism. Providing definitive treatment thus may counteract a major source of staff burnout in the psychiatric emergency service by eliminating the feeling of hopelessness that results from observing patients who return repeatedly to the service without any benefit from their expensive care.