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When a student chooses a career, they already have views/stereotypes about what that role constitutes. This also applies to students who choose a career in any health profession. This theoretical paper likens mental health to a threshold concept within interprofessional learning and, with it, the act of engaging in learning together as 'troublesome knowledge', which challenges their originally held notion of what it is to be a health professional both positively and negatively. It is felt that, although the development of professional identity remains progressively evolutionary through one's career, this paper intends to consider the journey of ‘troublesome knowledge’ for the health professional student appreciating mental health within interprofessional learning as a necessary challenge, in order to rediscover the true meaning of being a health professional. Challenging the previously held assumptions of the health professional students and their professional acquisition of knowledge about their chosen career and understanding of mental health is not only important to develop their skills within a varied team, but vital to the centrality of the patient.

The search for alternatives to inpatient mental health care in the UK and further afield has been going on over the last few decades of the previous century. Amongst the range of alternatives that have been developed are community‐based mental health crisis houses that seek to work with people, who may otherwise have been admitted to hospital. Amethyst House is a four‐bed mental health crisis house based in inner city Liverpool and works solely with the local Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team (CRHTT) to work with people who require support that could not be delivered at home. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of one element of a service evaluation: the effectiveness of the service in relation to the mental health needs of people admitted.

The paper describes the service model, which integrates the crisis house and the CRHTT, with the latter acting as gatekeepers to the service.

Findings showed improvements in mental health symptomatology and disabilities associated with the crisis between admission and discharge from the service.

The paper describes the profile of the people who used the service over a six‐month period in 2009, their care pathways through the service and their clinical outcomes between admission and discharge.