Can social recovery therapy improve social disability in young people?

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In her debut blog, Jude Madani summarises the findings of the PRODIGY trial, which looked at the clinical and cost-effectiveness of social recovery therapy for the prevention and treatment of long-term social disability among young people with emerging severe mental illness.

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Alcohol: a drug in a class of its own

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Ian Hamilton summarises a systematic review published last week, which explores the role of alcohol use and drinking patterns in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality.

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New mental health commissioning guides from JCPMH

Some doctors are reluctant to talk to patients about reducing their use of prescription drugs, even if they know there is no longer a medical reason for continued use.

Those lovely people at the Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health (JCP-MH) have published four new guides to help those of you involved in commissioning community specialist services, older people’s services, inpatient and crisis home treatment and services for people with learning disabilities. These guides are short (around 20 pages), readable and nicely summarised with ten [read the full story…]

Assertive outreach no better than standard care at preventing further suicide attempts in young people

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Regular close contact with specially trained staff is generally regarded as the best course of treatment for someone who has recently attempted to kill themselves, in order to prevent a repeat suicide attempt. Of course it can be difficult to engage with this group of patients after-treatment, but recent research suggests that assertive and motivational [read the full story…]

Reducing alcohol related hospital admissions and improving quality of care (QIPP)

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The British Society of Gastroenterology and the Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have published a quality and productivity (QIPP) case study, which looks at how to reduce alcohol related hospital admissions and improve the quality of care. Very few hospitals have dedicated alcohol services, and a 2009 survey showed that only 42% of acute [read the full story…]