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Keeping a Treatment Record
In the best of all worlds, there would be one master treatment record kept for each person with a mental illness. It would immediately be made available to all treatment personnel who see the person. But in this far-from-perfect world such a record often does not exist. Even when some approximation of it does exist, it is not always readily available. It takes time for one service to transfer records to another.
Therefore, another crucial function for families is to keep such a record. Of course, you may not be privy to each and every stay your relative makes in a hospital or care programme, but if you keep the best record you can and make it available each time your relative is admitted to a new programme or starts working with a new therapist or service provider, you will be offering invaluable information (Note that the staff may or may not have the ability to acknowledge this to you).
The record need not be lengthy or extremely detailed; what you want to offer is an overview. The guide below, “Keeping a Treatment Record of Your Own” outlines what should be included. Such a record can also be helpful in justifying the need for treatment or supported accommodation.
KEEPING A TREATMENT RECORD OF YOUR OWN
Include the following information in your record:
- Level of functioning prior to becoming ill. Highest level of school completed, work experience, level of basic life skills (cooking, cleaning, money management, independent living experience), social skills and relationships with peers, significant achievements.
- Symptoms. When they began, what they are, most effective ways of dealing with them, dates of more severe episodes.
- Treatment. Dates of the first psychiatric hospitalisation or treatment. How long it lasted. The diagnosis. How much improvement there was afterward. What psychiatric medication has been tried, when, how effective it was, and how serious the side effects were. Include similar information for any subsequent hospitalisations or involvement with treatment programmes.
- Level of functioning between hospitalisations or involvements in treatment programmes.
- Names, addresses, and phone numbers of all doctors, therapists, service providers and other significant persons involved with the person.
- National Insurance number.