Method of Levels for People Using Community Crisis Services

A mental health crisis is when someone is so distressed they need urgent help from services; often because they behave in ways that poses risk to themselves or others. Crisis teams offer care in the community to support people at home rather than in hospital. Current psychological interventions offered by crisis teams tend to be short-term and mainly involve providing information about the difficulties people are experiencing and help them to develop skills, such people as problem solving. This can be useful, however providing more intensive psychological support has been much more difficult within crisis settings, as teams must use limited resources to focus on managing risk. A therapy, called Method of Levels (MOL), designed to be flexible, may be helpful to add to treatment offered by crisis services in the community.

MOL aims to help people hold their attention on a problem long enough to view it in different ways, so that they might think of new solutions. This works by helping a person to regain a sense of control in their life and feel less distressed. MOL is useful for working with lots of different issues, since therapy does not only focus on one type of problem. People also get to choose what is discussed in therapy and session structure.

Research has shown MOL can be useful for people in crisis in places such as inpatient settings. So far, no research has been conducted within the community for people in crisis. This study aims to examine if MOL can be delivered within a crisis service in a way that is helpful and acceptable to people. To do this, the investigators will offer MOL to a small number of people presenting to crisis teams and collect information on whether people take up the therapy, and their experience of receiving it.