Advance Crisis Management Program for Inpatient & Residential Facilities

For this project, we designed and implemented a program that involved creation of psychiatric advance directives (PADs) through interviews with patients to determine their stress triggers, personal crisis management strategies, and preferred treatments during mental health emergencies. A second component was training staff members on how to use patients' PADs, along with crisis de-escalation and nonviolent intervention techniques. This program was then used to reduce the use of physical restraint on three psychiatric units of a university hospital. 

Access an article describing these findings.  
Download the Advance Crisis Management Manual to learn how to implement these strategies.  
​Download the psychiatric advance directive we developed for the study in English or in Spanish.