Psychiatric intensive care is for patients who are compulsorily detained and are in an acute phase of a serious mental disorder. They have a loss of capacity for self-control, an increase in risk of aggression, suicide and self-harm. This compromises the physical and psychological wellbeing of themselves and others and does not enable their safe, therapeutic management and treatment in a general open acute ward. Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) are small, highly staffed wards that provide intensive treatment to reduce risk, disturbance and vulnerability. They are open plan and may have seclusion facilities. Being cared for in a PICU can be a difficult, distressing and stressful time for patients, their family and carers and also provides one of the greatest challenges for the clinical staff caring for them.There is very little evidence and understanding about what it is like to experience this intensive care and an absence of research that examinespatient perception and satisfaction with services. In light of this, the aims of this project are to illuminate patients experiences of psychiatric intensive care, to initiate an understanding of what it is like to be cared for in PICU and to explore the meaning that patients ascribe to their experiences of psychiatric intensive care. This project is an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the accounts of patients receiving psychiatric intensive care. IPA is an approach to qualitative research that aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given phenomenon. Usually these phenomena relate to experiences of some personal significance, in this instance the episode of care in a PICU. Supported by the Trust Service User and Carer Research Group, this study undertook observations of patients during the time they spent on a PICU and once transferred to an open ward, four patient interviews were carried out.The findings have contributed to the existing literature regarding psychiatric intensive care.A number of implications for practice were identified, including the emotional wellbeing of patients distinct to their mental distress, the nature and impact of sedation, seclusion and care interventions and finally, the role and function of the [changeable] ward community
