Problems of collaboration between hospital and community mental health services

Abstract

Some mental health service users need support from both hospital- and community-based services. Treatment requires well-functioning collaborating practices between different mental health organizations and professions. However, serious problems of collaboration have existed in Danish psychiatry since the 1980s, when mental health service provisions were split into two psychiatric systems. In this article, we apply a sense-making lens in a qualitative study that assesses problems of collaboration between interacting mental health service organizations. We investigate professionals’ symbolic forms of meaning making and enactments in order to shed light on the interactions between professionals from different mental health organizations. We find that five distinct dynamics constitute problems of collaboration between hospital and community professionals: Absent exchange of knowledge, misunderstanding of work domain, mutual negative stereotyping, distrust, and unequal positioning of status. We end the article by discussing the study’s implications for practice.