Mental health care

Aim: The current cross-sectional study examined the relationship between affiliate stigma and externalizing and internalizing problems by investigating the role of family cohesion among adolescents having a parent with serious mental illness (SMI). Method: One hundred sixty-four adolescents were recruited from two community mental health centers. Family cohesion, affiliate stigma, and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a common mental illness impacting around 1 to 4% of the Australian population (National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) 2012). Perspectives of family carers for people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder: A scoping review on the emergency care responses of nurses and other health professionals, Australasian Emergency Care. Managing people with mental health presentations in emergency departments: A service exploration of the issues surrounding responsiveness from a mental health care consumer and carer perspective, 

Purpose/Objectives: To describe and examine the relationship between caregiver burden and the affective disorders anxiety and depression in caregivers of patients with brain metastases. Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational. Setting: Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego.Sample: 56 family caregivers of patients with brain metastases from solid tumors at other primary sites. Methods: Self-administered survey.

Aims and objectives: To explore parents’ involvement in the informal and professional care of their young adult child with mental illness. A further aim was to examine concepts in the caring theory of ‘Involvement in the light–Involvement in the dark’ in the context of mental health care.

This paper describes the increased national focus on including families and carers in all aspects of mainstream mental health services. It proposes that the specific recommendations included in the National Service Framework for Mental Health be brought together in the form of a strategy to enhance working partnerships with families and carers. It advocates that the implementation of the NSF requires a comprehensive awareness and basic skills training in order that the consideration of families and carers becomes a routine part of mainstream services. 

Mental health services are required to involve family, carers, and service users in the delivery and development of mental health services but how this can be done in routine practice is challenging. One potential solution is to prescribe practice standards or clear expectation relating to family involvement. This paper describes practice standards introduced to an adult mental health service and a study that aimed to evaluate the impact of the standards on practice.

This article describes the themes emerging from the author’s anthology of personal accounts of caring for a family member or friend with dementia, ‘Telling tales about dementia’. It explains the importance of family carers and suggests that the knowledge of family carers should be actively sought by professionals delivering services, discussing the barriers of patient confidentiality, examples of important information from family carers being disregarded, and the role of family carers in monitoring care and challenging professionals when necessary.

Describes a new strand in this journal in its coverage of research that involves mental health service users and is important to their concerns. Looks at some of the ways in which service user involvement can change research and heralds the dawn of a new era where service users and informal carers are not just the subjects of investigation, but can now have an effect on an influential research forum. (Quotes from original text)

This learning object focuses primarily on the later stages of dementia and on managing the more significant or prominent challenges - and symptoms - associated with this level of dementia. The material aims to reflect, where possible, the experiences of people with dementia and their family carers. Many of the examples given are located in a care home setting although the issues are also very relevant to supporting a person with dementia in the community.