Interdisciplinary treatment planning in inpatient settings: from myth to model

The staffs of many mental health facilities describe their treatment planning processes as interdisciplinary, but as most practicing clinicians know, this is more of a myth than reality. Individualized, person-focused treatment planning itself is not a simple endeavor. Effective treatment planning is further complicated by the fact that most discipline training programs teach neither treatment planning nor interdisciplinary methods to provide care and treatment. Psychiatric treatment teams are at a disadvantage from the start. Additionally, although facility and agency administrators expect treatment planning to occur, often the infrastructure to support the work is not there. This article describes a practical and effective treatment planning implementation model or framework developed by the authors, concentrating on three sub-sets of the treatment planning system: structure, content, and process.