Delineating the population served by a mobile crisis team: organizing diversity.

Objective: While mobile crisis teams have proliferated to address gaps in service for individuals with serious mental illness, research into their effectiveness is limited. This study identifies specific cohorts of individuals served by a single mobile crisis team so that appropriate program evaluation could be designed and conducted for each unique grouping.

Method: This retrospective study analyzes specific data from 4 sets of client records (n = 401) at 4 different time periods, using a qualitative, text-based approach.