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Hi there,

Outside of Newcastle, it isn’t widely used in a formal sense.

Within older adult services, a bit like CPA, it’s almost meaningless. Not because it’s not important or doesn’t apply, but quite the opposite. In every patient, with person centred care, you’re doing much of this anyway! Although other approaches such as Wellness Recovery Action Plans (WRAPs) are used in my corner, the Tidal Model was considered.

We looked long and hard, some of it isn’t employed (we don’t formally and conciously use metaphor as robustly as the Tidal Model) but focus on the meaning of their own experiences, actively attending to their own strengths, internal resources and wisdom gleaned simply from living their life for so many decades, curiosity and an interest in the patient’s narrative, person centred goals/care/solutions, moving away from paternalistic care, moving away from one model of care (it’s a biomedical model, or a neuropsychiatric model, or a psychosocial model) to accept different frameworks for different patients, investing time . . . this is the bread and butter of good old age mental health care.

Shouldn’t we all be doing this already, anyway?

As such, the principles and elements of the Tidal Model are widely used in older adult services. The formal application of it isn’t, since it’s a bit like having The Breathing Model for you, it’s pointless and insulting, you do it automatically anyway