ABSTRACT
The psychiatric emergency department (ED) was simply a small room filled with nurses, psychiatry residents, medical students, psychiatric technicians, and a few attending psychiatrists. There are different types of settings in EDs for the care of behavioral health emergencies. One such type is the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP), which is an independent unit with a short-term stay for patients. Another setting is a subsection of a general ED, where patients with psychiatric emergencies are seen by the consulting psychiatry team. Psychiatric clinicians in the ED must balance their internal signals and experience with patients they feel will not harm themselves and instead have a secondary motivation, with those who may have the potential to do something irreversible. The psychiatric diagnosis is one of exclusion, and the patient needs to be sober, or as close to sober as possible, for the psychiatric team to provide a meaningful consultation with recommendations.
