Outcomes of Restrictive Practice Review Meetings in an Acute Mental Health Unit: A Retrospective Before-and-After Study.

The study was done in one adult inpatient mental health unit, so it may not apply to other services. It was a retrospective before-and-after comparison without randomisation, so other unit-level factors could have influenced the event rates. Pandemic-affected days were treated as missing, which shortened the after period and may have changed the comparison. The models explained very little of the variation in event counts, so the estimates should be read cautiously. No service users took part in the reviews, so the study does not show how patients or families experienced the process. The Code Black increase was not explained, and a unit directive to call Code Black for potential escalation may have affected the count.

The study was funded by Southern Cross University. The authors state the research was conducted, analysed, reported, interpreted and written independently of organisations funding Esario IV Daguman's PhD scholarship, and the views expressed are solely those of the authors.

Do not read the 63% lower seclusion rate as proof that the reviews caused the reduction. This was a single-unit before-and-after study, the physical restraint reduction was not statistically significant, and the models explained very little of the variation.