Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit - (PICUs)

Priory's experience of supporting people with complex needs and challenging behaviours, along with co-existing issues (such as substance misuse), puts our services at the forefront of specialised intensive care.

Our psychiatric intensive care services have been developed over 20 years and support patients in a severe phase of illness, who cannot be managed in an acute or high dependency unit (HDU) service.

Our approach

• Our staff teams have extensive experience in managing high levels of disturbance
• We admit from a variety of settings, including from other PICUs
• Our PICUs meet the Department of Health’s National Minimum Standards for ‘General Adult Services in Psychiatric Intensive Care Units’
• We provide a safe and therapeutic environment to manage high levels of risk, and safely yet swiftly start patients on their road to recovery
• We focus on intensive, multidisciplinary and therapeutic programmes aimed at delivering evidenced-based interventions, in order to rapidly reduce acute symptoms
• We promote self-management and recovery
• We aim to ensure a short length of stay, prior to transferring patients to a less restrictive environment, wherever possible
• We provide rapid admission, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Who do we support?

• Individuals in need of psychiatric intensive care
• Patients sectioned under the Mental Health Act
• Those with a wide range of mental health conditions
• Individuals at risk of violence and aggression, and those who are psychotic and unpredictable
• Risk profiles from medium to high
• Those at risk of suicide
• Patients from other PICUs, prisons, police custody, Secure Services, acute services and the community