Services

The Affective Disorders Outpatient Service is a national, specialist outpatient service at Maudsley Hospital. We provide assessment, treatment and care for people aged over 18 who have complex or treatment-resistant mood disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder.

NADS is a “tertiary” specialist service, patients must be referred by their local psychiatrist who they have ongoing engagement/care with. Referrals must be approved by each patient’s local Integrated Care Board.

The Service does not treat urgent or emergency patients, therefore if a patient is currently suicidal or there are other current ongoing self harm issues the patient must not be referred to NADS and should be managed by their CMHT until stable and can then be referred to NADS.

The National Autism Unit (NAU) is a specialist inpatient service that provides assessment and treatment to men with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as:

• Comorbid mental illness associated with severe functional impairment​ 
• Levels of complexity and/or risk that necessitate an inpatient environment​ 
• Our multidisciplinary team has expertise in adapting evidence-based treatments to attend to the needs of individuals on the Autism spectrum.
• Providing expert care and treatment to individuals with complex presentations
• Treatment interventions are based upon a comprehensive multidisciplinary assessment involving diagnosis and formulation of developmental and mental health conditions and assessment of need. This includes consideration of sensory and information processing factors associated with neurodiversity.
• Psychological interventions are formulation-based and tailored to the needs of the individual. All patients have access to individual psychological input delivered by Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), British Psychological Society (BPS) registered psychologists and United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP) registered psychotherapists.
• Amongst a range of evidence based psychological approaches, where clinically indicated, we provide Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for mental health difficulties commonly associated with ASD, as recommended by NICE.
• We have a well resourced Nursing team comprised of Learning Disability and Mental Health Nurses. These skill sets complement each other, while bespoke training ensures that our expert Nursing staff are able to meet a range of complex needs of autistic individuals in a person centred way. 
• Due to the expertise required to support the individuals who access the service the NAU employs Senior Supports workers to deliver high standards or care and treatment.
• Our medical team is expert in psychopharmacological management of mental disorders co-morbid with ASD. Our medical team and patients have access to a dedicated pharmacist that gets to know the patients well & adapts treatments to the patients’ needs.
• We provide person-centred evidence-based treatments including a range of skill-building packages to develop life skills and promote independence.
• Our flexible approach to assessment and intervention means Autistic Individuals really do get a bespoke, needs based treatment package which balances evidence-based practice with creativity and adaptations to suit each individual.
• We are responsive to the Transforming Care process, working collaboratively with Community Mental Health Services, Commissioners and families to identify less restrictive opportunities and develop discharge pathways and aftercare packages within the community.
• The NAU is partnered with the ESTIA centre to ensure our expert clinicians are involved in training and development. We support the sharing of evidence based best practice to other services as well as translating research into practice.

The National Psychosis Service (NPS) is a clinical-academic tertiary service offering innovative individualised evidence-based multidisciplinary strategies to help those people with complex psychosis, including schizo-affective disorder, where standard treatment guidelines have proven ineffective or have not been tolerated. The service aims to enhance quality of life through tailored treatments and promotion of recovery thus reducing the need for high intensity placements and the risk of readmission.

Internationally renowned expertise in resistant psychosis is provided by a team of dedicated clinicians offering comprehensive medical reviews alongside innovative, bespoke treatment approaches. Themes include complex co-morbid physical health conditions which directly affect psychiatric treatment options; clozapine re-challenge after a significant adverse reaction; clozapine non-response.

Our specialist service is supported through established partnerships with the academic Departments of Psychosis Studies and Psychology based within the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. We also liaise with clinical experts within other specialties across King’s College London and King’s Health Partners. The National Psychosis team is closely linked to the Maudsley Pharmacy and the other national specialist mental health services.

The service aims to enhance quality of life through collaborative working towards recovery. We regularly audit and publish our service outcomes and receive excellent feedback from our patients and their families. Benefits include reduction in psychosis, less frequent episodes of illness, improved social functioning, better understanding of the illness by the patient and carers and enhanced engagement with physical and mental health care plans. We have published evidence that admissions result in reduced morbidity, fewer days spent in hospital, lower antipsychotic doses, substantial reductions in the risk of readmission or high intensity placements and less expensive long-term costs.

As our patients may be a long way from home, we aim to make admissions as short as possible and communicate regularly with carers, the referring team and CCGs or CSUs to plan care and facilitate timely discharge.

We provide a national, specialist outpatient assessment, treatment and rehabilitation service for people, aged over 18, who have complex psychosis, including schizo-affective disorder. A psychotic illness involves distorted perceptions of reality thinking, feeling, hearing and seeing often with symptoms of hallucinations and delusions.
National services are for people who live throughout the United Kingdom.

We treat people's physical and mental health. Our aim is to help people maintain their health and to reduce the risk of hospital readmission.

We encourage people, and their carers, to be actively involved in all decisions made about their treatment and care.

Due to Covid the out-patient service is accepting referrals and undertaking virtual assessments.
 

We offer services for women, aged 18-65, with acute mental health problems. Acute illnesses start quickly and have distressing symptoms. We care for people who live in the London Borough of Lambeth.

We provide inpatient psychiatric assessment, treatment and care to help reduce the risk of harm to self and others.

We bring together different professionals, including psychiatrists, nurses and social carers who work with the patient and their carers.

We help people to maintain their health and move on to live more independently in their communities.

The Lishman Unit is a 15-bedded inpatient ward located at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. This is a specialist neuropsychiatry inpatient unit offering multimodal assessment and treatment by a multidisciplinary team of experts. 

We also have significant experience in complex discharge planning for patients who require ongoing care and support after leaving hospital. 

This is a national service which accepts referrals from the whole of England. Once referrals have been accepted, the team carries out a pre-admission assessment to determine suitability for admission. 

We generally admit two types of patient: 

• Patients with severe functional neurological disorder (FND): We are one of very few specialist inpatient units in the UK who admit patients with severe disabling FND. Please be aware that because there are only a small number of such units nationwide, this service receives a very high number of referrals and the waiting time for admission is lengthy. The inpatient treatment programme involves multidisciplinary therapy input from a team comprising physiotherapy, occupational therapy, clinical psychology, and speech and language therapy, in addition to medical and nursing input. Admissions typically last 12 weeks, though this can vary.
• Patients with neurological disease or damage who require complex neuropsychiatric treatment and/or neurorehabilitation: Mostly these are patients who have sustained an acquired brain injury (ABI) but we also take patients with neurological conditions (for example, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, post-encephalitis) when these conditions are associated with cognitive problems or other psychological issues. Many of these referrals come from other hospitals and we are usually able to admit these patients within two to three weeks. The unit does not usually admit patients with severe alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD) as these patients generally require slower-stream rehabilitation. 

We also occasionally admit unusual cases where diagnosis may be unclear. If you are unsure whether a particular patient is suitable for this unit, we are always happy to discuss cases. 

For an overview of our other services, please visit our Neuropsychiatry Services page

This is a Living Well Network Alliance service. The centres will contain teams made up of psychiatrists, therapists, nurses, social workers, voluntary and community workers. These people are experienced in dealing with a wide range of mental health conditions. Some of them will have experienced such conditions themselves.

Living Well Centres will offer:

• Short-term support for those with low to moderate needs from our combined team of clinicians, social workers and support workers
• Moderate to high support from our joined-up, focused support team for those with greater need.