Question: what do you treat on the ward

Sheffield Psychiatry Ward Team answered on 5 Feb 2019:

Hi, Emma here 🙂

We all work with mentally unwell adults.
The patients we care for all have a serious mental illness and are too unwell to be looked after at home. They have conditions ranging from severe depression to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia. Sometimes people are admitted because we don’t know what is causing their illness so we need to observe and assess them. Every patient is different and some might have more than one diagnosis. What they have in common is that they are too poorly to be looked after in the community.

Some people may be too unwell to be able to agree to come into hospital, so they may be admitted under a law that enables mental health workers to admit them to keep themselves and others safe, also known as “Sectioning”. That law is called the Mental Health Act. We also look after patients that are able to agree to be admitted as well.