Co-production and community mobilisation are not new concepts to the NHS, or indeed commissioning – recent years have seen examples such as the King’s Fund Experience Based Co-Design toolkit and NESTA’s People Powered Health programme. However, this new report suggests that in the NHS we haven’t entirely grasped the more radical aspects of the concept. [read the full story…]
Self-directed support is described by InControl as an approach to social care which gives people optimum choice and control over their support arrangements. People with social care needs are offered funding to organise their own support, rather than being offered a directly provided service. There is now a clear policy direction in England and Scotland [read the full story…]
Just over a decade ago, a research study of rural mental health services in the north Midlands of the UK, recognised the importance of community mental health services and workers operating in a sensitive, non-stigmatising way (Crawford and Brown, 2002). The study made the connection between mental health stigma and service use. The authors described mental health [read the full story…]
. Peer support has been a hot topic in the woodland recently. Although there appears to be a lack of evidence to support the clinical effectiveness of peer support interventions for people with severe mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it is an approach that is highly valued by many. It might be [read the full story…]
I was a terrible sleeper as a child. I remember lying awake on one particular occasion because I had read a book about space and thought that the sun might swallow up the earth. I was intrigued then, when I was asked to review a paper for the Mental Elf about parasomnias and childhood psychotic [read the full story…]
There is considerable evidence that people with learning disabilities in residential settings are prescribed anti-psychotic medication to help reduce behaviours that challenge the service. However, there can be significant side effects from these powerful drugs and for some people these can be as debilitating as the impact of the behaviours. In some instances the effects [read the full story…]
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have recently searched for any new evidence that may be relevant to a public health guideline published in 2007; ‘Interventions to reduce substance misuse among vulnerable young people’. In this blog I summarise the new evidence that has emerged and highlight whether or not it is likely [read the full story…]
This review aims to assess the role of the various characteristics of orthodontic brackets (material, slot size, ligation type, etc) and their combination with specific wires on their clinical effectiveness and associated side-effects during fixed-appliance orthodontic treatment. Searches were conducted in Medline, Cochrane Library, Biomed Central, BBO including LILACS, Ind Med, Sceilo, Clinical trials.gov, Conference [read the full story…]
UK law requires public services to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people following the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) and the Equality Act (2010), which does not cover Northern Ireland. For people with physical disabilities these have predominantly focused on the environment, whilst for people with a learning disabilities it requires more commonly clear explanations and [read the full story…]
In England and Wales, the Mental Health Act (1983, revised 2007) allows for the detention of individuals to hospital for a period of assessment (Section 2) or treatment (Section 3) if it is deemed that they suffer with a mental disorder of a nature or degree sufficient to warrant admission to hospital and it is necessary [read the full story…]
