Mental health services

Aims and objectives: The purpose of our paper was to explore primary caregivers' experience of the way public mental health nurses and other mental health clinicians responded to them as primary carers of older adults with mental illness.

Background: As populations age, the prevalence of mental illness in older adults will increase and the burden of care placed on family carers will intensify. While family carers are essential to the well-being and quality of life of older adults with mental illness, they frequently experience marginalisation from clinicians.

Background  Government guidelines promote the use of mainstream mental health services for people with intellectual disabilities whenever possible. However, little is known about the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities who use such services.

Materials and Methods  Face-to-face interviews with service users, carers and community nurses were completed and analysed on a case by case basis using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results were followed up in focus groups with service providers.

NAViGO, a community interest company formed by service users and carers in partnership with mental health workers, has take over the running of all mental health services in northeast Lincolnshire. This article investigates this innovative example of service user and carer involvement in designing and delivering mental health services. The introduction of RESPECT training, which trains mental health workers to defuse difficult situations without using control and restraint techniques, is also discussed.

This literature review on choice in mental health was commissioned by the Department of Health in July 2005 and submitted to the Department in January 2006. The main part of the review looked at the English language literature on choice in mental health over the past five years. It aimed to identify in particular what tools there are to help people make meaningful choices; what media are effective in facilitating decision-making; and to what extent methods such as advance directives might be used.

In the UK, there are around 1.5 million carers of people with mental health problems providing substantial amounts of free care. Despite having a legal right to a ‘carer's assessment’, only a minority of mental health carers have had such an assessment.

This article looks at one model of how mental health professionals relate to carers and families.  It then goes on to consider some research on aspects of the family environment, and the impact that mental illness has on how clients and families relate to one another.  Finally it offers suggestions as to how this material might be relevant to our approach to social work in mental health.

OBJECTIVE: To provide descriptive information about a short-term educational programme for rural carers of people with a mental illness, living in the Loddon Campaspe Southern Mallee region.

METHOD: The Carers Education Exchange Programme is a flexible, needs-based model that can be modified to cater for individual groups. It consists of a number of sessions on topics relevant to caring for someone with a mental illness, held over a period of several weeks. The programme is offered at locations throughout the region, making it accessible to carers in isolated, rural areas.

The author had a shock when she visited her mother in India and discovered the realities of caring for a person with mental health problems. Here she describes the difficulties that many carers cope with on a daily basis.

Reports on the development of a joint mental health strategy for older people in a central London Borough. The project brought together clinicians and practitioners from a variety of settings, the voluntary sector, and users and carers. The aim of the project was to develop a shared philosophy of care based on promoting independence and from this to identify the components of a spectrum of care that would meet the wide range of needs of elders with mental ill health. The borough had high levels of deprivation, unemployment and poor housing.

This article highlights the importance of information‐sharing in mental health care and in particular the difficulties that can follow when practitioners do not perceive lay carers as ‘partners in care’. The findings of a survey, in which views were sought on poor information‐sharing as a barrier to engagement in mental health services, are reported. The authors conclude with a number of recommendations on improving the way information is shared.