The Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry
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Demoralization, as described by Jerome Frank, is experienced as a persistent inability to cope, together with associated feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, meaninglessness, subjective incompetence and diminished self-esteem. It is arguably the main reason people seek psychiatric treatment, yet is a concept largely ignored in psychiatry. The aim here is to review and summarize the literature pertaining to demoralization in order to examine the validity of the construct. ⋯ Demoralization is an important construct with established descriptive and predictive validity. A place needs to be found for it in psychiatric nomenclature.
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Aust N Z J Psychiatry · Dec 2002
What is duty/triage? Understanding the role of duty/triage in an area mental health service.
To describe the duty/triage system within one urban area mental health service in Australia and to investigate the factors that affect the decision to organize a comprehensive assessment. ⋯ A substantial number of potential patients contact a duty/triage worker every day. However, there is little interaction with the primary care sector, limited documentation of risk and a lack of consistency in the documented reasons for the service response. Further investigation is needed of the conditions conducive to consistent quality decision making at the point of entry to a specialist mental health service.