Community Mental Health Services (Older Persons)

About the service

Older persons community mental health teams offer support to older people (normally aged 65 or over unless presenting with early memory deficits) who are experiencing mental health problems. This might be due to an organic mental illness for example Alzheimers dementia or a functional mental illness for example depression, schizophrenia, mood disorders or anxiety.  

With all ‘functional’ mental illnesses, we focus on a person’s recovery from illness, rather than just their treatment. Functional mental illnesses have a predominantly psychological cause and include conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, mood disorders and anxiety.

We also help older people with ‘organic’ mental illnesses, usually caused by a disease affecting the brain, such as Alzheimer’s. We provide community-based health care and support people to live as independently as possible by giving advice and signposting them to social support agencies.  We can also refer to other teams, such as our specialist memory service which runs Memory Matters courses.     

Accessing the service

If you feel that you need support from any of our services, speak to your GP to request a referral. Your local Community Mental Health Team will complete a thorough assessment with you to make sure you’re signposted to the right services. Once the assessment has been completed, we will discuss this in a multidisciplinary team meeting.

The team consists of Consultant Psychiatrists, Registered mental health nurses, Occupational therapists, speech & language therapists, and psychologists. We will create a care plan in discussion with you and your carers/families to help meet your needs.