Abstract
Crisis stabilization units (CSUs) provide short-term residential mental health and substance use treatment to people experiencing acute behavioral health crises. While preliminary evidence suggests CSUs may reduce justice-involvement and increase connection to outpatient health services, nuanced longitudinal studies are lacking. In this study, 208 CSU patients completed assessments during admission and at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months thereafter. Jail booking data for CSU catchment areas was also collected and linked to participant records. Compared with their recent service use at baseline, participants were more likely to use outpatient medical care and less likely to visit emergency departments or use inpatient psychiatric/psychological services after their CSU stay. Jail bookings did not change significantly following CSU admission. Taken together, CSUs appear to play a key role in the health care continuum, providing a short-term window of opportunity wherein other interventions could be integrated to promote longer-term improvement; recommendations and future directions are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
