Adult mental health – coronavirus

As an increasing number of staff need to self-isolate, care for family or become unwell, we need to focus on the people who most urgently need our care and support for their mental health.

This message sets out Lambeth’s adult mental health Alliance response to the current situation. We will update this advice as the situation changes.

Official advice: Public Health England has confirmed that anyone with a new, persistent cough, or high temperature, must stay at home for 7 days if you live alone or 14 days if you live with others. See guidance here on self-isolation.

For people currently being supported
If you are currently receiving support from Lambeth mental health services (Living Well Network Alliance) face-to-face support will either be replaced by telephone, Skype (or similar) support or postponed. You will receive a letter, email or phone call explaining what will happen in your case. Clients who become mentally unwell will have a home visit. We will be assessing, on a case by case basis, how often we need to see clients who don’t have access to a phone or computer.

If you currently receive ‘depot’ injections and do not have any coronavirus symptoms, you will be asked to come to one of our Living Well Centres in either Brixton or Streatham. You will be contacted directly with an appointment slot of where and when to attend. For those who do have symptoms we will contact you to arrange home visits.

For those taking Clozapine and having regular blood testing, our Clozapine clinic will continue at Orchard House in Lambeth Hospital. If you have coronavirus symptoms, we will arrange home visits for a blood test.

For those in in-patient beds, support will continue as normal though we are asking visitors to contact their loved ones by phone or video call instead wherever possible.

For GPs and other referrers and professionals
We will be operating a crisis and urgent only service until further notice.

You can still submit referrals to the Single Point of Access for non-urgent cases in the usual way but these are likely to be put on hold for now.

We will continue to deal with crisis and urgent referrals on a daily basis. Please only mark referrals as crisis or urgent where they genuinely fall into these categories.

Please do not contact the SPA unless it is urgent as this takes time away from dealing with crisis and urgent assessments.
If you need urgent support

Call 0800 731 2864 to speak to our mental health crisis line.

If you are with someone who has attempted suicide, call 999 and stay with them until the ambulance arrives.

The NHS Choices website includes help for suicidal thoughts and advice from the Samaritans about how to start a difficult conversation if you are worried about someone.

Face-to-face support for those who feel life is no longer worth living is available in central London from the listening place.

The Supporting your mental health leaflet contains useful online links for advice, information and support. It also has phone numbers you can use in a crisis (please only call if you really need to).

20.3.20 – updated 30.3.20