Helen Lee1, Swapna Verma1, Peter Wong1; 1Early Psychosis Intervention Programme, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore.
EPIP was the first clinical service to start psychiatric case management in Singapore. In the beginning, our case management model was adopted from other developed countries, but gradually our care model has evolved with the changing healthcare landscape and resources’ allocation and taking into account our users’ literacy in mental health. We have moved away from emphasizing medication compliance and adherence to doctors’ appointments to focusing more on identification of clients’ strengths and empowering them to be active participants of their own recovery. Our clients’ satisfaction rate has been consistently good and 75% of our clients returned to school or are gainfully employed upon discharge from our programme (Verma, et al., 2012). Recently we conducted a qualitative study to explore the perspectives of clients and caregivers on case management with the intent to understand the salient aspects of case management from their perspective. Focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted with 47 clients and 19 caregivers. The main themes that emerged were: therapeutic alliance, holistic monitoring, collaborative role with other care providers, counselling and guidance, crisis management, client empowerment and strength building, education on illness, support and problem solving. A second phase quantitative study is currently underway that looks at validating a scale on the quality of case management in an Early Intervention service.
