Open access. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar or other psychoses in England receive the majority of their healthcare from primary care. Primary care practitioners may not be well equipped to meet their needs and there is often poor communication with secondary care. Collaborative care is a promising alternative model but has not been trialled specifically with this service user group in England. Collaborative care for other mental health conditions has not been widely implemented despite evidence of its effectiveness. We carried out a formative evaluation of the PARTNERS model of collaborative care, with the aim of establishing barriers and facilitators to delivery, identifying implementation support requirements and testing the initial programme theory.
It is generally acknowledged that small, rural NHS health care providers face higher costs than larger, urban areas. For a number of years the NHS has adjusted financial allocations to account for these unavoidable variations in costs in different parts of the country. However, our review for the National Centre for Rural Health and Care suggests these adjustments may not be compensating enough to avoid some rural trusts facing increased difficulties.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, is today (Wednesday) publishing a report looking at the amount spent on “low-level” mental health support for children in England. “Low-level” mental health services are preventative and early intervention services for treating problems like anxiety and depression or eating disorders, such as support provided by school nurses or counsellors, drop-in centres or online counselling services. These services are vital for offering early help to children suffering from mental health problems and can often prevent conditions developing into much more serious illnesses.
The Care Quality Commission has rated the care being provided by MOSAIC to be Outstanding after an inspection in January 2019.
MOSAIC is a substance misuse service operated by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and provides support and treatment for people with drug and alcohol issues, as well as support for young people whose parents misuse substances.
A psychological treatment service working in GP surgeries in Nottingham offers hope to people other services can’t help and has already saved more money than its staffing costs in its first year, according to research published today by Centre for Mental Health with the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network.
A new approach to complex needs, by Nick O’Shea, reports on the Primary Care Psychological Medicine service in Rushcliffe. The service offers psychological interventions to people who have high levels of unexplained or persistent physical symptoms of illness. Persistent physical symptoms can be painful, life-limiting and distressing. This can mean multiple GP appointments, outpatient visits and emergencies.
EDITORIAL. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
Early intervention is a fundamental principle in health care and the past two decades have seen it belatedly introduced into the field of mental health. This began in psychotic disorders, arguably the least promising place to start. The steady accumulation of scientific evidence for early intervention has eventually overwhelmed the sceptics, transformed thinking in psychotic disorders and created an international wave of service reform. This paradigm shift has paved the way to a more substantial one: early intervention across the full diagnostic spectrum. 75% of mental illnesses emerge before the age of 25 years, and young people bear the major burden for those disorders that threaten the many decades of productive adult life. The paradox is that young people aged between 12 and 25 years have had by far the worst levels of access to mental health care across the whole lifespan. . To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Just over a year after Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust transformed the former Living Well centre in Southport into a community hub and home to the Recovery College, Mr Blundell unveiled a plaque to mark its official opening.
Since opening its doors to the local community, service users, carers and families in May 2017, Southport Life Rooms has welcomed 17,521 people through its doors. Mr Blundell met staff and volunteers and took part in a Men’s Mental Health Recovery College Course and spoke to participants at craft and board games sessions.
COMMENTARY ON: Robson D, Spaducci G, McNeill A, et al. Effect of implementation of a smoke-free policy on physical violence in a psychiatric inpatient setting: an interrupted time series analysis. Lancet Psychiatry 2017;4,540–6.. To read the full article, log in using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens details.
The Trust was successful in its bid for funding from NHS England for the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) scheme, and will be recruiting employment specialists and an IPS team leader for the core and enhanced teams in Calderdale.
Service users who want paid work can be referred directly by their doctor or another mental health professional, and can also self-refer.
Employment specialists find suitable jobs matched to a person’s skills and interests, offer coaching around finding a job and preparing for interviews whilst providing tailored ongoing support when the person is in work. They can also speak to employers directly alongside the service user to identify well-suited roles – acting as a crucial link between patient, their employer and their clinical team.
How a service for young people in North Yorkshire works with other agencies to focus on all their emotional wellbeing, substance misuse and mental health needs.
Open access. The Frequent Attenders Programme is a joint initiative between Hertfordshire Rapid Assessment, Interface and Discharge service and the Emergency Department of the West Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which aims to divert frequent attenders from the emergency department by addressing their unmet needs. This paper describes the range of interventions put in place from the time that the service was set up in 2014 until the introduction of the new national Commissioning for Quality and Innovation 2017–2019, which tasked National Health Service trusts to improve services for people with mental health needs who present to Accident and Emergency. The terms emergency department and Accident and Emergency are used interchangeably, reflecting the practice in policy documents. A subsequent article will report on the impact of the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation in Hertfordshire.
We are proud to partner with Stay Alive, the UK’s first suicide prevention app, which offers information, help and support to people in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire.
Open access. Street triage services are increasingly common and part of standard responses to mental health crises in the community, but little is understood about them. We conducted a national survey of mental health trusts to gather detailed information regarding street triage services alongside a survey of Thames Valley police officers to ascertain their views and experiences.
Sonia Johnson and Bryn Lloyd-Evans reflect on the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit contribution to the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act.
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