The Impact of Open Dialogue-Informed Family Intervention on Recovery and Crisis Service Use in Early Psychosis Care

The Southwark Team for Early Psychosis (STEP) is an ‘Early Intervention for Psychosis’ (EIP) service in South London. This service follows a nationally implemented model of care for up to three years supporting people and their families experiencing a first-episode of psychosis.

Part of NICE recommended care under this service is ‘Family Intervention’ (FI). These are meetings with service users alongside their social network, typically delivered through structured, psychoeducational sessions. However, for the past five years the STEP team FI pathway has been informed by principles of ‘Open Dialogue’. This is also an approach where care is delivered through meetings involving both service users and their family or friends. However, rather than a structured intervention, these meetings are characterised by open, unstructured conversations where the emphasis is on hearing everyone’s perspective.