Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department uses to categorise (a) urgent and (b) very urgent cases for referral to mental health crisis services.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s mental health clinically-led review of standards states that the specialist urgent mental health crisis service will determine whether a referral requires an urgent or very urgent response. For urgent referrals, this may include high risk behaviour due to mental health symptoms, new or increasing psychiatric symptoms that require timely intervention to prevent full relapse and/or significantly impaired ability for completing activities of daily living or vulnerability due to mental illness, expressing suicidal ideation but no plan or clear intent.

For very urgent referrals, this may include those who present a risk of harm to themselves or others, acute suicidal ideation with clear plan and intent, who have a rapidly worsening mental state, who do not require immediate physical health medical intervention, are not threatening violence to others.