Emergency psychiatric home visiting: report of four years experience.

An Emergency Psychiatric Home Visiting Team made 624 visits to 443 patients in a 4 year period. In situations where patients were frequently psychotic, violent, or threatening violence, the team was sucessful at facilitating emergency care and defusing crisis situations. The team was equivocally successful at preventing hospitalization. Facilitation of hospitalization often became a more important function than prevention. Few visits were for suicidal behavior. No team member was ever harmed in the course of a visit. The team also served as a major psychiatric care provider and social support to a group of chronic patients and families who utilized the service multiple times.