Around 1% of the population will develop psychosis and schizophrenia (NICE, 2014).
Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) services are community-based multidisciplinary teams that seek to reduce the amount of time between the onset of symptoms and the start of treatment to improve outcomes. EIP has two objectives:
To prevent the onset of schizophrenia in people with prodromal (at risk of psychosis) symptoms (Marshall & Rathbone, 2011)
To provide effective treatment to people in the early stages of schizophrenia, with the goal of reducing long-term severity (Marshall & Rathbone, 2011).
UK guidelines state: “early intervention in psychosis services should be accessible to all people with a first episode or first presentation of psychosis” (NICE, 2014).
However, a 2011 Cochrane systematic review stated that whilst there was some evidence to support specialist EIP services, further trials were needed to strengthen the evidence base (Marshall & Rathbone, 2011).
A recent study by Tsiachristas and colleagues aimed to demonstrate the costs, outcomes and economic impact of EIP services, compared to other community mental health teams (CMHTs) (Tsiachristas et al, 2016).