Positive behavioural support (PBS) may be a potentially interesting service for adults with intellectual disabilities and behaviours that challenge, improving outcomes and lowering the cost of care in the longer term. This is the main finding of our initial look at the economic case in collaboration with a small local authority in England, with funding from the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research (NIHR SSCR).
Last month we ventured out of the office to learn more about the world of day care for people with dementia in a fascinating visit to two centres in a London borough.
Along with us, our colleagues Adelina Comas-Herrera, Raphael Wittenberg, Derek King, Bo Hu and Amritpal Rehill from PSSRU at LSE took part in the trip. We are all working on the MODEM project, which is modelling the costs and outcomes of dementia.
Almost half of inpatients (1,450 or 48 per cent2) with learning disabilities3 in specialist inpatient units on 30 September 2015 were also receiving inpatient care at the time of previous census collections dating back to 20134. This finding comes from the third annual Learning Disability Census, published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) today.
The list for 2016 comprises of 15 books, including big-name authors such as Matt Haig, Jonathan Coe and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, as well as exciting new names like Holly Bourne and the debut novel by now-bestselling crime author Sarah Hilary. The list has been curated to reach specific audiences with different attitudes or approaches to reading, including adults and young people dealing with mental health issues (_Reasons to Stay Alive_ by Matt Haig and Am I Normal Yet by Holly Bourne) The Quick Reads title A Baby at the Beach Café by Lucy Diamond will be distributed to its target audience of vulnerable pregnant women and young mothers.
he percentage of children in Reception Year2 who are obese has decreased to 9.1 per cent in 2014-15, according to new figures published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) today.
Three out of four (74 per cent2) pregnant women with diabetes have higher than recommended3 blood sugar4 levels in early pregnancy, new findings from a national audit reveal.
Open access. Mental imagery may influence the onset and maintenance of depression, but specific mechanisms have not yet been determined. Nine hundred twelve participants completed questionnaires on positive and negative mental images, as well as images of injury and death that lead to positive emotions (“ID-images”), and depressive symptomatology. The assessment was carried out online to reduce effects of social desirability.
The Accessible Information Standard directs and defines a specific, consistent approach to identifying, recording, flagging, sharing and meeting the information and communication support needs of patients, service users, carers and parents, where those needs relate to a disability, impairment or sensory loss.
Open access. Patients admitted to a secure forensic hospital are at risk of a long hospital stay. Forensic hospital beds are a scarce and expensive resource and ability to identify the factors predicting length of stay at time of admission would be beneficial. The DUNDRUM-1 triage security scale and DUNDRUM-2 triage urgency scale are designed to assess need for therapeutic security and urgency of that need while the HCR-20 predicts risk of violence. We hypothesized that items on the DUNDRUM-1 and DUNDRUM-2 scales, rated at the time of pre-admission assessment, would predict length of stay in a medium secure forensic hospital setting.
The Department of Health has published its response to the Law Commission’s consultation on how the law should regulate deprivations of liberty (DoLS) for people who lack capacity to consent to their care and treatment arrangements.
The consultation proposes that DoLS should be replaced by a new system called ‘protective care’. It also proposes that there should be a new code of practice.
Open access. The relationship between mental illness and violent crime is complex because of the involvement of many other confounding risk factors. In the present study, we analysed psychiatric and neurological disorders in relation to the risk of convictions for violent crime, taking into account early behavioural and socio-economic risk factors.
A study has been published in the Health Expectations journal exploring perceptions and experiences of engaging with health information online in a young adults familiar with social media.
Open access. Social networks of patients with psychosis can provide social support, and improve health and social outcomes, including quality of life. However, patients with psychosis often live rather isolated with very limited social networks. Evidence for interventions targeting symptoms or social skills, are largely unsuccessful at improving social networks indirectly. As an alternative, interventions may directly focus on expanding networks. In this systematic review, we assessed what interventions have previously been tested for this and to what extent they have been effective.
The King’s Fund and Picker Institute Europe have published the first longitudinal study of inpatient survey data over a nine year period, from 2005 to 2013. The findings show how patients’ experience has changed over time at a national level and an individual trust level.
Open access. Mental health inpatient wards are stressful places to work and concerns have been raised regarding quality of patient care and staff wellbeing on these wards. Recent research has suggested that robust support systems and conditions that allow staff to exercise professional autonomy in their clinical work result in better staff morale. Staff value having a voice in their organisations, and say that they would like more interaction with patients and processes to reduce violent incidents on wards. There has been little research into patients’ views on staff morale and on how it may impact on their care. This study aimed to explore staff morale and staff-patient relationships from a patient perspective.
NICE have published an updated guideline on type 2 diabetes in adults that states healthcare professionals should involve people with type 2 diabetes in decisions about their care, and ensure they are offered patient education support.
The author presents a personal narrative of her experiences in the development of a mobile healthcare application which aims to address the issue of sexual health among young adults. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens
Open access. Psychotropic medications are frequently used to treat challenging behaviour in children with intellectual disabilities, despite a lack of evidence for their efficacy. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour among children with intellectual disabilities.
The article offers information on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Topics discussed include a brief description of the mental illness, the symptoms presented by individuals afflicted with the disorder such as obsession with certain activities and anxiety, and the recommended initiatives for addressing the illness which include cognitive behavioral therapy. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens
This paper is concerned with improving assessment practices with people who are carers of people with mental illness. It is established that the well-being of carers is negatively impacted by the burden of their caring role, and that the needs of carers are often overlooked and poorly responded to by formal helping services.
Login using your SSOTP NHS Athens for full text. SSSFT - request a copy of the article from the library http://www.sssft.nhs.uk/library