Early Intervention Psychosis Service (EIP) – North Essex

Summary

The Early Intervention Service offers supports to people in the North Essex area aged between 14 and 64 years old, who may be experiencing symptoms of first episode psychosis.

Psychosis is a condition that effects a person’s ability to know what is real. This can affect people’s thoughts, experiences, emotions or behaviour and can be distressing or troubling for either the person or those around them.

The support offered is designed to meet an individual’s and their family’s needs. The approach is a hopeful and positive one that endeavors to keep in place an individual’s personal strengths, healthy activities and interests.

Anyone aged between 14 to 18 years will also have support from the Children & Young People’s mental health services.

The service aim is to ensure everyone works together toward a positive and rewarding experience that allows the individual the best opportunity to recover, learn about himself or herself and resume their life plans.

Service Information

Often the people we work with are at an important and sometimes stressful transition in their lives, such as finishing school, college or university, starting work, moving out of home, having children, or developing or ending relationships. Early intervention services aim to minimise the impact of experiencing psychosis during these critical periods in people’s lives.

What is Psychosis?

Psychosis is a name that mental health services use to describe certain experiences.  Whatever the cause, no one person’s experiences are exactly the same, but might include things like:

• Hearing voices when there is no one there
• Seeing, feeling, tasting or smelling things that others can’t
• Holding strong beliefs that other people do not share or think are unusual
• Worrying that people might want to hurt you in some way
• Feeling very special, energised and having lots of thoughts and ideas
• Having difficulties concentrating and thinking
• Feeling confused and out of touch with your normal way of experiencing the world
• Withdrawing into yourself and struggling to do things you usually do

Many people have these kinds of experiences (e.g. 1 in 10 people will hear voices in their lifetime and lots have beliefs that those around them find a bit strange), but they do not contact mental health services.  This tends to be because they do not find the experiences distressing.  There also might be differences in how people interpret these experiences, depending on their cultural beliefs and backgrounds.

Most people who get in touch with services such as ours do so because they or those around them find the experiences scary or upsetting and they want some help with them.  About 1 in 100 people who seek out support from mental health professionals may be offered a diagnosis of psychosis (sometimes this is given other names such as schizophrenia). 

Although the majority of individuals experiencing psychosis for the first time tend to be younger people (between 14 and 35 years old), our services are available to people up to the age of 65 years – as we know that these experiences can occur at any time of life.  For people outside of this age range, there are other mental health services and external organisations that can help.  For more information, please contact your GP, who will be able to provide advice and referral options.

What the service offers

The team is made-up of a wide range of professionals with particular sets of knowledge and skills. You and your family/close friends may be offered support from mental health nurses, our team psychiatrist, psychologist occupational therapist, employment advisor and social worker.

People engaged with the team have an allocated practitioner whose role is to coordinate their care and treatment plan and liaise with other practitioners to ensure interventions are appropriate and timely.

The service works within national guidance, that is:

• People experiencing first episode psychosis will receive an initial assessment within 2 weeks.
• Once in the service you will be allocated to and engaged with by an EIP care coordinator.
• Be offered the full range of psychological, psychosocial, pharmacological and other interventions shown to be effective including:
  • Family Interventions
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis
  • Access to Employment Support Services
  • Physical Interventions.

The service also provides support for families and carers.

We work across the whole of Essex and are based in the community.  This means that we can meet with people in a whole variety of settings, depending on what feels most useful and comfortable for them.

Our teams have developed in collaboration with local partnerships and preferences and based on local needs, and as such have slightly different names. 

• South Essex the teams are called Essex Support and Treatment for Early Psychosis-ESTEP
• North East and Mid Essex ,they are called Early Intervention in Psychosis-EIP 
• North West Essex they are called the First Episode in Psychosis-FEP service

Team contact details

Services to support those at risk of developing psychosis

ARMS services: please contact your local EIP service and ask them about the local ARMS service

Referral Information

Referrals can be made by a GP or other healthcare professional for patients with symptoms of suspected First Episode Psychosis.

Requests for consultation/discussion should be sent via email to the team [email protected]