Who treats you in a psychiatric unit?

You can be referred to an outpatient course of treatment or admitted in a psychiatric unit by your practitioner, a specialist doctor or a doctor in a hospital department. You will only be referred if he or she assesses that your condition is so severe that you should be examined and treated in a psychiatric hospital. If your condition is less severe, you will instead be referred to a private psychologist or psychiatrist.

If you are referred for treatment in a psychiatric unit, it is often because you need treatment from several specialist groups. For example, the treatment team in a psychiatric unit consists of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, teachers, social and healthcare workers, ergotherapists, physiotherapists and dieticians. They may have special educations, further training and special experiences that mean that they can take care of some of the tasks that one otherwise associates with other professionals.

Some psychiatric nurses have further training in conversational therapy and therefore take care of the course of treatment with individual therapy or group therapy just like psychologists and psychiatrists. It is always the doctor who is responsible for the treatment who has the overall specialist responsibility for your treatment. However, he or she will also involve other specialist groups when your treatment is to be planned. So there are several specialist to ensure the quality of your treatment, also even though you may primarily only have contact with one therapist.

When you are admitted to a hospital or given outpatient treatment, you are assigned a contact person. He or she helps to ensure that you experience that your course of treatment during the hospitalisation hangs together. This means that he or she will inform you about your illness, the examinations you must go to and your treatment. In addition, he or she will communicate the information about you if you are moved to another department or hospital. Your contact person also assists in planning your discharge.

In short, your contact person will follow you from the start of your admission through your discharge and help to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible and that you and your needs are looked after.

In some departments, peer employees are assigned. These are people with their own experience of being a patient in a psychiatric unit. This makes them especially qualified to speak with you, because they themselves have been in a similar situation and have experience in recovering after a mental illness. However, they are not a part of the treatment team, but an addition.

When you are given a diagnosis in a psychiatric unit, the treatment team will try to understand your whole situation. This means that they will try to understand how you are as person, what your life has been like up to now and how you are doing socially as well as with your work and your family. Your own efforts for getting better are also of great importance for the treatment of your mental illness. Therefore, the treatment team tries to involve both you and your relatives throughout the entire course of treatment to the extent you wish. And they try to cooperate with you as much as possible so that you get better.