The aim of the project is to listen to children and young people’s views on how health and care services could be improved. To do this, we worked with Youth Action Wiltshire to train 12 people, aged 16-18 years, in skills such as safeguarding, listening and communication. They can now go out into the community and speak to children and young people about their experiences.
Empirical evidence shows that family involvement (FI) can play a pivotal role in the coping and recovery of persons with severe mental illness (SMI). Nevertheless, various studies demonstrate that FI in mental healthcare services is often not (sufficiently) realized. In order to develop more insights, this scoping review gives an overview of how various stakeholders conceptualize, perceive and experience barriers to FI. Central questions are: 1) What are the main barriers to FI reported by the different key stakeholders (i.e. the persons with SMI, their families and the professionals, and 2) What are the differences and similarities between the various stakeholders’ perspectives on these barriers.
Carl is a mental health campaigner who loves poetry. Here he blogs about how reading, writing or even performing can help your wellbeing, and gives his tips on how to get started...
This resource was commissioned by NHS England to support delivery of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and the NHS Long Term Plan. A service that has been commissioned based on the principles of co-production is more likely to be cost-effective, responsive and have high satisfaction and health outcome rates from people using it.
Presentation from NHS Transformathon. We know the perspectives and knowledge of patients and service users are an important resource for those involved in the design and delivery of services. The NHS Five Year Forward View rightly calls for a new relationship with patients, citizens and communities but what that new relationship looks like and how this might happen is less clear.
Service data indicates that from a sample of 102 service users 80.4% had their families involved in their care.
In line with offering a combined healthy eating and physical activity programme the service is also piloting the Supporting Health and Promoting Exercise (SHAPE) physical health intervention programme, which uses the expertise of nutritionists, exercise physiologists and health trainers. It is a structured and intensive 12-week course with follow-up over 12 months, which includes a group educational programme and individually tailored exercises sessions.
I was 8 years old when my father, Cecil Dawson, was diagnosed as having Alzheimer disease. Receiving a loved one’s diagnosis of a fatal degenerative disease is always traumatic; however, my mother and I were completely unprepared for what lay ahead of us.....Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
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Quality of life is important especially in incurable illness. In dementia, we often need proxy reports of quality of life, but we know little about how individuals make their judgements. In care homes, proxies may be staff providing care or relatives, but staff rate quality of life differently to family. To our knowledge, no one has explored this qualitatively, so we used qualitative interviews to explore why staff and family think differently about quality of life.. 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.
People have told local Healthwatch that mental health is a key priority. With the Mental Health Taskforce due to report its findings soon, we look in more detail at the challenges people have been sharing.
Positive psychology interventions are brief self-adminstered exercises designed to promote positive emotions, behaviours, or thoughts. They are potentially effective for reducing depression and are considered suitable for online dissemination to people with depression and related conditions, as they are assumed to be more acceptable than traditional symptom-focused approaches. However, there is little investigation into perceived acceptability and potential factors that might affect it. This might limit the development and evaluation of effective interventions.
DSDC run workshops for informal carers of people with dementia. This post shares notes from someone who went to a workshop and how her putting these ideas into practice made a difference to the person she cared for.
Taking a patient’s autonomy is life changing. This account [of being sectioned] shows the importance of careful handling of the situation both before and after the event.
To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Open access. Recently the dementia field has shifted focus away from the early diagnosis debate in favour of ‘timely’ diagnosis. ‘Timely’ diagnosis disclosure takes into consideration the preferences and unique circumstances of the individual. Determining when diagnosis disclosure is ‘timely’ may be particularly complex if there are differing views between the individual, their family, and their health care providers regarding disclosure. This study explores the preferences of consumers regarding when a diagnosis of dementia should be communicated.
In summary, they found that people wanted a workforce who held positive attitudes and considered the people they supported or cared for as equals. They also wanted a workforce who could support them across both a Health and Care setting, with a range of physical and mental health needs, and who could also help them develop skills to become more independent. [Link to full report]
A new systematic review published last week in BMJ Open by Eiring and colleagues aimed to investigate patients’ preferences for outcomes associated with psychoactive medications.
With cases of dementia on the rise, it's more important than ever that services give people the support they need. Read our briefing to find out what people have told local Healthwatch about their experiences of care.
Caring for a child with intellectual disability (ID) has been associated with increased social and psychological burdens. Diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty may enhance emotional stress in families.. 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.