BPS statement regarding the High Intensity Network’s Serenity Integrated Mentoring

Statistics and measures reported by the High Intensity Network and other organisations using SIM are centred mainly on producing savings and managing resource issues for the police and health services.

There seems to be little consideration of what their use means for the service users involved.

We also note that, although there appears to be some psychological framing, details of what the approach involves are not available. The BPS regards transparency in terms of the processes used in psychological interventions to be crucial.

We advocate patient choice and personalised care, and recognise that people in crisis will often need a multi-agency approach to support them. All interventions must:

• recognise the mental and physical health issues present in people in crisis
• be designed with benefit to the service user as the key outcome
• be of high quality and evidence-based, formulated with qualified, regulated mental health professionals such as psychologists
• transparent in terms of the techniques used

While we do not usually comment on individual models of therapy, we do expect that the intervention models used by our members and psychologists are based on high standards of contemporary evidence.

SIM does not currently have a peer-reviewed evidence-base, and we are calling for a rapid and robust review of the model.