Busy emergency departments (EDs) are not the optimum environment for assessment of patients in mental health crisis. The Psychiatric Decisions Unit (PDU) was developed by the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust as an enhanced assessment service to ensure patients in mental health crisis receive optimal care.- Mental Elf Blog post.
During 2018, stakeholders from the health and social care system, and the charitable sector, were asked to comment on the progress of the actions set out in the Challenge on dementia 2020 implementation plan and what else needed to be done to complete them.
This report summarises the responses and sets out revised actions for 2018 to 2020.
A new report by the Health Foundation highlights that NHS staff numbers are failing to keep pace with demand and that there is ongoing deterioration in workforce numbers in critical areas such as primary and community care, nursing and mental health.
Wakefield child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) have been delivering supportive sessions in schools.
The team works with professionals within local schools to offer consultations to develop a further understanding of young people’s emotional wellbeing, and to enable staff to talk about mental health concerns directly with parents. The sessions develop skills and provide resources to staff which can be used with other children they work with and reduce overall demand on mental health services.
Wakefield CAMHS also offer direct support to individual children and young people in school, offering information and guidance on topics such as anxiety, self-esteem, anger management, understanding emotions, bereavement, stress, and exam management.
Alongside this, they offer group sessions covering topics such as exam stress, mindfulness, and transitioning to secondary school.
Open access. Smoking has played a significant role in the historical culture of mental healthcare settings. Mental health professionals (MHPs) often hold dismissive attitudes regarding the importance of smoking cessation in the context of mental healthcare. In 2007, English mental health inpatient buildings were required by law to become smoke-free, and healthcare trusts have more recently begun to implement comprehensive policies (i.e. smoke-free grounds and buildings) and staff training in response to national guidance. It is therefore important to explore MHPs practice around smoking, smoking cessation, and smoke-free policy adherence. This study aimed to explore these issues by using the COM-B (capability, opportunity, motivation, behaviour) model to systematically identify barriers to, and facilitators for, MHPs addressing smoking with their patients.
Open access. Recent qualitative research suggests that changes to the way eligibility for welfare payments is determined in the UK may be detrimental to claimants with mental illnesses. No large-scale analysis has been undertaken to date.
Personalised Care will benefit up to 2.5 million people by 2024, giving them the same choice and control over their mental and physical health that they have come to expect in every other aspect of their life. This document confirms how we will do this by 2023/24. It is the action plan for the rolling out personalised care across England.
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.
Problem drinkers and smokers who end up in hospital will be helped by dedicated new services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.
As part of new NHS prevention measures, people who are alcohol dependent will be helped by new Alcohol Care Teams, while more than half a million patients who smoke, including pregnant women and their partners will also be helped to stop, in a new drive that will see all smokers admitted to hospital encouraged to quit.
This statistical release makes available the most recent Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly and quarterly data, including activity, waiting times, and outcomes such as recovery. It also makes available, for the first time, additional experimental statistics about a pilot programme for integrated IAPT services.