Medical & Psychiatric Collaboration

Medical & psychiatric collaboration focuses on aligning behaviour support with healthcare and mental health treatment. Many people who experience behaviours of concern are also navigating complex health, medication, or psychiatric needs. Working together helps teams avoid mixed messages, duplicated efforts, and gaps in support.

Our role is to bring a behaviour-analytic perspective to multidisciplinary discussions… clarifying what behaviour data can tell us, how environments and routines are contributing, and how support plans can sit alongside medical and psychiatric decision making rather than competing with it.

What collaboration can include

• Sharing behaviour assessment findings with medical and psychiatric teams
• Clarifying how health conditions or medication effects may relate to behaviour
• Coordinating behaviour support plans with treatment plans and care pathways
• Discussing risk, restrictive practices, and safety planning from multiple viewpoints
• Preparing summaries or reports that can be used in clinical meetings
• Supporting families to understand how different services fit together
• Identifying information that would be useful to monitor over time

How we work with clinical teams

We aim to contribute clearly and respectfully to existing clinical relationships. The focus is on useful, behaviour-driven information… not on duplicating the work of medical or psychiatric colleagues.

• Joining case conferences or multidisciplinary team meetings when invited
• Providing structured behaviour summaries that complement clinical formulations
• Using shared language about risk, quality of life, and consent where possible
• Highlighting environmental and skills-based interventions alongside medication changes
• Clarifying what data will be collected and how it will be shared across teams
• Reviewing collaborative plans at key points such as admission, discharge, or major transitions