‘Frequent Flyers’ in an Inner City London Early Intervention Population
Poster B14, Friday, October 21, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Wei Han Lim1, Niki Rahaman1; 1Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust
The population experiencing a first episode of psychosis in the inner-city London catchment areas of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster appears transient with frequent movement of individuals into and out of the borough and abroad. In a service evaluation, we compared cross-sections of the entire caseload on specific dates with available data. On an arbitrarily chosen date in March 2015, 5% of the entire caseload (10/204 patients) were either out-of-borough or abroad. On another arbitrary date in August 2015 chosen to capture variation during the summer holidays, this figure increases to approximately 10% (24/224 patients). A comparison of similar dates in March and August from 2011-2015 showed that this figure has remained relatively constant every single year over the past five years. There is also a consistent proportion of patients ranging from 4-10% of yearly discharges who have been discharged to another country with an even greater number to other parts of the UK. Patients move around for various reasons and the travelling population is heterogeneous. There is distinct movement of a significant proportion (5-10%) of this inner-city patient population at any one time. In addition to previous studies linking psychosis with urbanicity and migration 1,2,3 the observation shows that this population is already, or still, very mobile in the early stages of a psychotic illness and the reasons for this needs further exploration. Consideration also needs to be given to the engagement and treatment difficulties of such a transient population and impact of frequent movement on the course of illness.
Topic Area: First Episode Psychosis