NHS Lanarkshire and North and South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnerships are leading a national programme, on behalf of the Scottish Government, to improve the response to people who present at front line services in distress.

The Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) Programme is a four year initiative which emerged from the Scottish Government’s work on the Suicide Prevention and Mental Health strategies which showed that people in distress require improved co-ordination across agencies, quicker access to support and more consistency in the compassion they receive.

The DBI programme aims to help address this by training frontline NHS, police, primary care and ambulance staff to provide a compassionate response to people in distress making it more likely they will engage with and stay connected to services or support that may benefit them over time.

Kevin O’Neill, DBI national programme manager, said: “A DBI is a time limited and supportive problem solving contact with an individual in distress.

“It’s a two-level approach with level 1 delivered by front line staff involving a compassionate response, signposting and offer of referral to a DBI level 2 service.

“Level 2 will be provided by commissioned and trained third sector staff who will see the person within 24-hours of referral and provide compassionate community problem solving support, wellness and distress management planning, supported connections and signposting for a period of up to 14 days.”

Building consistent, collaborative, compassion is at the heart of DBI.

Four sites will be involved in the pilot with locations in Inverness, Aberdeen and Borders joining Lanarkshire.

The University of Glasgow’s (UG) Institute of Health & Well-being is developing the DBI related training. An independent evaluation is also being commissioned.

Kevin continued: “A very controlled implementation in Lanarkshire will begin in June 2017, with incremental up scaling across all four partnership sites from October 2017 in preparation for full delivery in April 2018.”

For further information on DBI call 01698 366988 or email: DBIcentral@lanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk