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UCL Division of Psychiatry Scholarships 2019

By rejusjo, on 13 August 2019

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We are very pleased  to announce that we can offer a small number of Division of Psychiatry Scholarships to contribute towards fees for the MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research, the MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences Research or the MSc in Dementia Causes, Treatment and Research (Mental Health), beginning in 2019-20.

We aim to award these scholarships to the applicants who appear most promising as future researchers in mental health. The scholarships will be worth up to £3,000.  Part-time or flexible students entering the second year of the course are also eligible, and can apply for a further award if successful last year (amounts are likely to be smaller for part-timers). Names of award-winners will be announced on our website. To be considered for these scholarships, please apply for a Division of Psychiatry MSc if you have not done so already (the MSc Clinical Mental Health Sciences is closed, so that you are required already to be an offer holder on this course), and please also send to Mrs Chris Coup, MSc Course Administrator at c.coup@ucl.ac.uk, a 500 word statement summarising:

(a) your research achievements so far;

(b) how you envisage research being part of your future career;

(c) what topic in mental health you would like to research in future, why, and how you would approach it.

Awards will be made on the basis of these statements and your application forms for the MSc.

For continuing students entering the second year and beyond, achievements so far on the MSc can also be taken into account.

Applications need to be received by  the end of 31 August 2019. Those holding offers for the MSc Clinical Mental Health Sciences, offer holders or applicants for the MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research and the MSc Dementia Causes, Treatment and Research (Mental Health), and continuing students on any programme can be considered.

Further details of our MScs:

MSc Mental Health Sciences Research

MSc Clinical Mental Health Sciences

MSc Dementia Causes, Treatment and Research (Mental Health)

MSc Scholarships for North London clinical staff – 2019

By rejusjo, on 14 July 2019

High Flyers - Prabhu B Doss (https://www.flickr.com/photos/kshathriya/2617686791/in/photostream/)

High Flyers – Prabhu B Doss (https://www.flickr.com/photos/kshathriya/2617686791/in/photostream/)

Noclor Research Support Service announces scholarships of between 20% and 50% total part time fees to support clinical staff in North London Trusts to undertake the UCL MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research commencing at the end of September 2019. Awards can be used in combination with other scholarships or study leave funding. The course provides a practical and stimulating training in research skills, appropriate for mental health professionals with a strong interest in becoming researchers/academic clinicians.

These scholarships are open only to staff working within the following affiliated Noclor Trusts:

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
East London NHS Foundation Trust
Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust
West London Mental Health Trust

 

Scholarships are especially intended for clinicians, but applications from staff without clinical qualifications who have worked in the Trusts for at least two years will also be considered. Trainees who are qualified clinicians, such as junior psychiatrists on rotation, will also be considered. Service users undertaking paid roles such as peer support workers are also encouraged to apply.

To be considered, please apply for the MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research at UCL and please also send to Mrs Chris Coup, MSc Course Administrator at c.coup@ucl.ac.uk, a CV of a maximum of 2 pages summarising your relevant achievements, especially related to research, and a 500 word statement summarising:
(a) how you envisage research being part of your future career;
(b) what topic in mental health you would like to research in future, why, and how you would approach it.

Awards will be made on this basis to both new and continuing students.

Deadline: 31 August 2019

UCL MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research

Noclor Research Support Service

Scholarships for Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust staff for research MSc study

By rejusjo, on 13 July 2019

Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust announces scholarships of between 20% and 50% total part time fees to support clinical staff in North London Trusts to undertake the UCL MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research based in the UCL Division of Psychiatry, commencing at the end of September 2019. Awards can be used in combination with other scholarships or study leave funding. The course provides a practical and stimulating training in research skills, appropriate for mental health professionals with a strong interest in becoming researchers/academic clinicians.

These scholarships are open only to staff currently working within Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. Scholarships are especially intended for clinicians, but applications from staff without clinical qualifications who have worked in the Trusts for at least two years will also be considered. Trainees who are qualified clinicians, such as junior psychiatrists on rotation, will also be considered. Service users undertaking paid roles such as peer support workers are also encouraged to apply.

To be considered, please apply for the MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research at UCL and please also send to Mrs Chris Coup, MSc Course Administrator at c.coup@ucl.ac.uk, a CV of a maximum of 2 pages summarising your relevant achievements, especially related to research, and a 500 word statement summarising:
(a) how you envisage research being part of your future career;

(b) what topic in mental health you would like to research in future, why, and how you would approach it.

Awards will be made on this basis to both new and continuing students.

Deadline: 31 August 2019

UCL MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research

Blog for International Fathers’ Mental Health Day

By rejusjo, on 17 June 2019

But what about us? Fathers’ experiences of perinatal mental health care

Billie Lever Taylor & Sonia Johnson

Posted on International Fathers’ Mental Health Day – June 17th 2019 

“All the help and people just looked at Nadia*. They’ve not looked at me. I mean, not asked ‘Oh how are you feeling?’ And stuff. Nothing. It’s just all Nadia.”

When Adam’s partner Nadia was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis shortly after their baby was born, Adam found himself caught up in the crisis. He wanted help himself – and wanted to know how best he could help Nadia. But like many fathers in our research on experiences of perinatal (during and after pregnancy) mental health care, he felt excluded. “I would have liked to have come to the first meeting when she first met [her care coordinator] and then they could say ‘Right, I’m so and so. This is what I do. This is what I’ve studied…This is the plan, what I’m going to do with Nadia.”

There is increasing recognition that healthcare professionals supporting women with mental health difficulties in the perinatal period need to ‘think family’: fathers both affect and are affected by mothers’ perinatal mental health. Also, mental health difficulties among fathers as well as mothers are linked to emotional and behavioural problems in children, particularly where parents experience relationship conflict.

Our research, led from UCL, suggests that – in the UK and internationally – partners, fathers and wider families feel marginalised by services treating perinatal mental health difficulties. Our findings are based on in-depth interviews with over 50 mothers across England, who received NHS support for a perinatal mental health difficulty. These interviews were carried out in the Stacey study, which was part of a bigger investigation of care for mothers with mental health problems called the ESMI programme.  We also spoke to over 30 of their partners (including same-sex partners) or other family members (for example, where mothers did not have a partner). And we reviewed international research on the topic. We focus here on fathers, who were the biggest group of family members we spoke to.

We found that, even though it was the mothers who had been diagnosed with perinatal mental health problems, their difficulties often arose within a fraught interpersonal and social context. Often, the whole family was struggling. Fathers could play an important role in supporting mothers – and encouraging or sometimes discouraging them from seeking help. But, despite their importance, fathers were not routinely included in appointments. There was little acknowledgement of their needs or support for them – either to help them support the mother, or to help with their own struggles.

Although healthcare professionals were seen as dedicated and hardworking, services were structured in ways that excluded fathers. For example, many only offered appointments during working hours, making it difficult for fathers to attend. Professionals did not always have the resources or skills to work with families – and sometimes struggled to include fathers, while still protecting the needs of mothers and babies.

Inpatient mother and baby units were described as better than other services at including and supporting fathers. But admissions separated mothers and babies from fathers (and wider family networks) without always recognising the impact of this or offering help to cope with it. Fathers could also find themselves with older children to look after on their own and juggling multiple demands.

We found that both mothers and fathers had anxieties about the impact of more involvement and support for fathers. Complex and sometimes delicate family situations could mean that some mothers did not want their partners involved. For fathers, views of masculinity made it hard for them to acknowledge their needs or ask for support. This also played a role in professionals excluding fathers – which could then further encourage fathers to see their own needs as insignificant.

It seems likely that the exclusion of fathers is linked partly to wider assumptions about motherhood and fatherhood. Western cultures increasingly recognise more diverse family set-ups and there have been drives towards greater gender equality. But even so, mothers and mother-infant bonds are still seen as most important for child development, with fathers seen as secondary. Mothers are expected to be natural nurturers and to bear most responsibility for the developing infant. Fathers are increasingly expected to be more hands-on with their infants but find there are obstacles to this in practice. Dealing with these expectations, along with other challenges in the perinatal period, can play a role in causing perinatal distress.

But instead of addressing perinatal mental health difficulties within this wider context, services appear to let cultural norms shape their practice. Perinatal distress is often treated as a problem of the mother’s mind. Treatments focus on individual mothers or mother-infant bonds. Fathers – and the couple relationship – are neglected. This in some ways reinforces traditional gender roles and diverts attention from the need for wider change.

Services need to find ways to overcome barriers to family inclusion and to challenge gender norms and expectations. This applies not only to mental health services but, for example, to maternity services too, where fathers also report feeling excluded. Broader community and social responses to perinatal distress are needed. This is not straightforward, particularly in the context of stretched resources. It could include supporting policies that lessen economic pressures on families; facilitate the uptake of shared parental leave; ensure fair and timely access to welfare; and address gender inequality and attitudes.

Changes to current care could include, for example: identifying acceptable ways to include fathers in appointments; routinely asking mothers how they would like their partners to be involved; offering opportunities for fathers to speak to professionals separately; providing childcare or crèches to enable fathers to attend appointments with mothers; offering flexible appointment times outside working hours; exploring the feasibility of allowing fathers to stay overnight on mother and baby units; and perhaps also seeking to recruit more male staff within services.

There would also seem to be value in developing and evaluating resources and interventions aimed at fathers and couples. As Adam says, “They never think of the other partner…Sometimes I think for **** sake, I need some help as well here. You know what I mean?”

*All names have been changed.

This post summarises independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its PGfAR Programme (Grant Reference Number RP-PG-1210-12002). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The study team acknowledges the study delivery support given by the local Clinical Research Networks.

Billie Lever Taylor is a clinical psychologist and researcher at UCL, specialising in perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships.

Sonia Johnson is professor of social and community psychiatry at UCL, and consultant psychiatrist at Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. She is also director of the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit for England.

This post summarises independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its PGfAR Programme (Grant Reference Number RP-PG-1210-12002, Chief Investigator Prof Louise Howard, Section for Women’s Mental Health, King’s College London). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The study team acknowledges the study delivery support given by the local Clinical Research Networks.

Billie Lever Taylor is a clinical psychologist and researcher at UCL, specialising in perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships. Contact her billie.tayor@ucl.ac.uk for more details about our work. 

Sonia Johnson is professor of social and community psychiatry at UCL, and consultant psychiatrist at Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. She is also director of the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit for England.

UCL Psychiatry Post-graduate Open Evening 20th March

By rejusjo, on 25 February 2019

UCL Division of Psychiatry Post-graduate Open Evening

Wednesday March 20th 530pm-7pm

All who are interested in our MSc programmes or in PhD study in the Division of Psychiatry are warmly invited to attend our Open Evening on Wednesday 20th March. There will be brief talks from key members of staff and a chance to chat over drinks to staff and current and former students. Programmes covered include the MSc Clinical Mental Health Sciences, MSc Mental Health Sciences Research and MSc Dementia: Causes, Treatment and Research (Mental Health).

Location: Room 221, Bentham House, 4–8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG

This is very close to Euston and Euston Square stations: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/bentham-house

Please register your interest in attending with Chris Coup – c.coup@ucl.ac.uk. 

 

Sonia Johnson’s keynote at the MQ Mental Health Scientific Meeting, London, February 2019

By rejusjo, on 7 February 2019

Sonia Johnson was honoured to be invited by mental health research charity MQ to give the opening keynote at their 2019 Scientific Meeting in London.  She proposed a new set of research priorities for seeking to improve the lives and outcomes of people with severe mental health problems such as psychosis and bipolar. Here to allow access for those interested are the slides from this presentation. How can we improve the lives and outcomes of people with severe mental health problems?

Taking the Pulse of Qualitative Health Research in a Changing World

By rejuhll, on 3 July 2018

Professor Catherine Pope on “radical change oriented health research.”

 

This blog post is co-written by the QHRN committee and also appears on the QHRN website.

On June 25th, the UCL Qualitative Health Research Network hosted a workshop on qualitative approaches to studying change in health, illness and care, supported by the Wellcome Trust.  Our workshop—Responding to Change: Perspectives from Qualitative Health Research—also aimed to “take the pulse” of the qualitative health research community as it engages in the theme of change.  Reflection on this theme comes as we look towards our 4th biennial symposium—Crafting the Future of Qualitative Health Research in a Changing World—planned for 21st-22nd March, 2019.

Change is happening constantly—it is nothing new.  But it has what seems an intrinsic and inexhaustible capacity to present and assert itself as such.  We are witnessing major change in healthcare environments across the globe and across multiple dimensions.  Rapid technological advances, personalised medicine, and on-going demands for more patient involvement, to name just several fundamental shifts underway now.  These advances are happening against a backdrop of major geopolitical and demographic change, with ageing communities, global austerity and the biggest wave of mass migration since the second world war.  These bring significant social consequences for patients, practitioners, policymakers and society at large and they are seriously challenging established forms of care, the allocation of resources and the inscription of new roles, responsibilities and relationships.  At a different scale, change is a fundamental feature of care—we aim to make people better or prevent them becoming ill—and we design ways of intervening in people’s lives in complex ways.  These changes also require nuanced analysis.

As a network—and as independent researchers engaged in qualitative work—we have become increasingly interested in the contributions researchers engaged with qualitative approaches can make to the study of change and how we can help healthcare communities to anticipate and navigate the many and complex social consequences entangled with it—as commentators, theorists and as agents of change.  And we are also interested in the tensions it produces for researchers—as we too have to navigate its many flows.  In short, our goal was to reflect on these questions: How can we study change qualitatively?  How does change, by virtue of its fleeting nature and unintended effects, complicate normative approaches in qualitative health research?  How can we respond to change in meaningful and timely ways?

Our call for papers drew a healthy number of varied and fantastically thoughtful submissions from around the globe.  From these, we selected 24 participants and asked them to submit brief papers for circulation before the workshop.  This greased the wheels for discussion and got participants acquainted with each other’s work.  Researchers came from a variety of academic homes (including anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, psychology, and medicine), countries (including the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain and Hong Kong), and experience (from PhD students to Professors, and people with direct experience of illness and care).

Catherine Pope, Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Southampton, started off the day with a rousing keynote lecture, setting the tone as one of deep reflection and progressive action.  Reflecting on what will soon be 30-years of work that has done much to place qualitative approaches on a more solid footing in the academy of health and social care sciences, Cathy provoked us to think about what a community of researchers engaged in “radical change oriented health research” might look like.  What followed certainly rose to her provocation.

In a packed and experimental day of discussion, each participant summarised their paper in a 4-minute speech, without PowerPoint and with an alarm to call time.  Intervention … alarm … intervention … alarm—like a four-minute pulse sending forward the conversation.  What might have been sacrificed in terms of longer more detailed accounts was gained in the generative effect of keeping things open and at a point of imminence—itself a key feature of change.

We ordered papers into three sessions—Tensions and opportunities in evaluating and creating change; Methodological reflections on studying and responding to change; Theorising change and its processes—after which we drew breath and engaged in longer group discussions.

Tensions and opportunities in evaluating and creating change­—The papers in our first session discussed the features and complexities of studying change when the boundaries between researcher and researched are blurred.  Offering examples from approaches broadly characterised as participatory, engaged, and co-produced, these papers suggested productive possibilities and tensions in researcher standpoint and positionality—how researchers are located in the research field.  The opportunities discussed included the possibility of integrated accounts of change between researchers and community; while tensions and challenges included the will to balance impartiality in research with engaged practice when researchers of change are also agents of change.  Collectively, these papers called into question what we mean by the categories of expertise, experience and engagement and their relationships to how communities imagine and try to enact alternative futures for health and care.

Methodological reflections on studying and responding to change—The papers in our second session offered ways of using and enhancing qualitative methods to study change within individuals and populations and across multiple kinds, rates and degrees of change.  They reflected deeply on broader societal change, policy, and individual attitudes, suggesting how flexible and adaptive approaches like oral history, longitudinal interview and ethnography might better enable us to capture change.  Here, stories are traced as they unfold, wresting accounts of subjectivity and society from the static quality of snapshots to the more dynamic character of the moving picture.  The papers in this session also offered reflections on the timely dissemination of research in rapidly changing environments, such as epidemic disease and service reorganisation.  These papers tackled questions of rigour, relevance and timeliness, and how advocates of rapid approaches might address accusations of being “quick and dirty.”

Theorising change and its processes—The papers in our final session broadly cohered around concepts and mechanisms of change.  They offered theoretical perspectives on studying change, its processes and the critical need to account for social context.  Papers suggested ways to theoretically integrate different levels of change (e.g., micro, meso, macro), consider how change occurs across multiple temporalities (kinds and rates of change), and reflect on its broader dynamics and relationships to continuity.  These papers therefore drew attention to structural conditions and contexts—for example, funding, policy, and governance—which bear upon how we can think about and study change.

As we look forward to our 4th symposium, we report that the pulse of qualitative health research and its investments in studying change is strong, supporting a body of researchers adapted and ready for radical change oriented health research.  This approach is extremely capable of producing the rich and nuanced accounts that are much needed to help patients, health and social care practitioners, policymakers, and society at large, anticipate and navigate the social consequences of change as it unfolds continuously through multiple arenas.  A big thank you to all who participated.  Read more about the workshop in our detailed report … coming soon!

The UCL Qualitative Health Research Network is a cross-faculty collaboration between UCL Department of Applied Health Research, UCL Division of Psychiatry Qualitative Researchers Working Group supported by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, and UCL Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, and it is open to anyone interested in qualitative health research in the UK and abroad.  We hold a Wellcome Trust award, which supported the workshop in addition to our quarterly seminars and forthcoming international two-day symposium planned for 21st-22nd March, 2019.  Check here for more details.

Wellcome Trust funding for UCL Division of Psychiatry Qualitative Researchers Working Group seminars and symposium

By Jake Fairnie, on 23 December 2017

On behalf of the UCL Qualitative Health Research Network, we are delighted to announce that the Wellcome Trust is funding our next 18-month programme of seminars and our 4th biennial symposium.  This programme, entitled “Crafting qualitative health research for the future,” is on the broad theme of “change” and will interrogate the conceptual and methodological problems it poses to qualitative approaches in health research.  We are especially interested in exploring the roles that qualitative researchers can take in supporting healthcare communities to anticipate and negotiate the social consequences of changing populations, global austerity, rapid technological advances, personalised medicine, and on-going demands for more patient involvement as well as the related tensions between in-depth qualitative work and timely dissemination of findings.  We look forward to engaging in this exciting programme of work.  For updates please see our Qualitative Researchers Working Group page and visit QHRN.

Community Navigator study: latest developments

By uctvtst, on 13 November 2017

We may not have blogged for a while, but we’ve been making a lot of progress on the Community Navigator study! Here are some of the highlights:

  1. We started recruiting people to take part in the study in April 2017 and hit our target of recruiting forty people in August 2017. The 30 participants who were assigned to receive the programme of support have begun to meet with their Community Navigators for 1:1 sessions and at the optional group meet-ups.
  2. We’ve begun running the meet-up groups. The idea behind the meet-ups is to provide opportunities for our participants to meet each other, discuss the programme’s aims and their own progress, and share information about local groups, activities and services that they have a positive experience of. The first group for our Camden & Islington (C&I) participants took place at the beginning of August and the one for our Barnet participants took place at mid-September.
  3. We’ve published the study protocol in the journal BMC Trials and you can take a look here: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-017-2226-7
  4. Members of the study team attended the European Network of Mental Health Service Evaluation (ENMESH Conference) in the Netherlands. At the conference we presented our work on coproducing a Theory of Change for the project and it won a Best Poster Award!
  5. Follow-up Interviews and Qualitative data collection have begun and will continue until early next year.

If you want to know more, then keep reading below!

Outline of Meet-up Groups

War barnetBoth of our meet-ups followed a flexible agenda, which was co-produced by the Community Navigators and the study’s working group that is made up of researchers, experts by experience and clinicians. The meet-ups started with introductions and an icebreaker activity, in which people looked at photographs of places around their borough and tried to guess where they were. This activity was particularly successful in initiating discussion and giving people a chance to get to know one another. The icebreaker was followed by a short break for refreshments and a chance to mingle.

What was next? The Groups 4 Health quiz! Clients and Community Navigators completed a Groups 4 Health exercise that G4H-Logo-Purple-Largeinvolves ranking factors according to how important they are for our health. Once people ranked the factors, the Community Navigators showed them a graph of the general public’s rankings when asked the same question, and then showed participants another graph, which shows the real importance of each of these factors, based on the latest research. Contrary to what most people assume, social support and social integration are actually the most important factors for health in this list. People were really interested to hear each other’s ratings and a vigorous discussion followed about which factors are important and why. Each of the meet-ups came to an end after about two hours.

Reflections on Meet-up Groups

Attendees from both groups provided very positive feedback, and found the groups helpful and enjoyable. A second group has been planned in C&I for November 2017, and in Barnet for January 2018. We were very pleased that, following the group meetings, some of the participants have made connections and arranged to meet up together, or arranged a future Community Navigator session together with another participant.

Poster Prize

posterA poster designed by Vanessa Pinfold (Study co-applicant, McPin Foundation) about the theory of change behind the Community Navigator programme won the best poster award at the ENMESH conference in the Netherlands. The topic of the conference was “Conceptualising, measuring and influencing context in mental health care: from the individual to the society”, and took place on October 5, 6 & 7, 2017.  We won the poster prize for Theme 3: Approaches – using the patient’s own context, which was 250 euros. Our poster showed our current version theory of change (Version 18!), and celebrated that we had involved researchers, service users, and clinicians in the process.

 

Trial protocol paper

The final phase of the Community Navigator study is a feasibility trial. We will use this to further test and refine the Community Navigator programme of support, and check that recruiting and retaining people to take part in a randomised trial of the intervention can be achieved. The trial protocol, which sets out how we will run the trial, was registered in advance, and has now been published in BMC Trials. It is available here: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-017-2226-7

 

You can share your thoughts with us on Twitter or get in touch with Dora by emailing theodora.stefanidou.15@ucl.ac.uk. You can also find out more about the study on our main webpage, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychiatry/research/epidemiology/community-navigator-study/.

Inequities in support for relatives bereaved by psychiatric patient suicide

By rejualp, on 24 April 2017

Inequities in support_32017 has already been a busy year for mental health policy announcements. On 9th January the Prime Minister announced a package of measures to transform mental health support, highlighting the “shocking reality” of 13 deaths by suicide a day in England. On the same day the Department of Health published a progress update on the suicide prevention strategy, setting out an intention to improve responses to people bereaved by suicide. This had been one of the two overarching objectives of the revised 2012 suicide prevention strategy, but three years on the progress report acknowledged that “delivery in this area has not progressed enough to ensure that there are good quality and consistent suicide bereavement services in every area across the country”.

These pronouncements on service provision after suicide bereavement have direct relevance to NHS mental health trusts. The recent 20 year review of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness reported that 18,172 psychiatric patients in the UK had died by suicide over the period 2004 to 2014, representing 28% of general population suicides. The MRC-funded systematic review we conducted in the UCL Division of Psychiatry has described the effects of suicide bereavement on mental health and suicide risk, and there is a growing awareness that each suicide has an impact on relatives, partners, friends, and mental health professionals. Guidelines set down in 2009 by the National Patient Safety Agency indicate that after the suicide of a psychiatric patient, mental health teams should offer families and carers “prompt and open information” and “appropriate and effective support” as well as involving them in a routine post-suicide review. Until now it has not been clear how often this happens in practice.

Inequities in support_2This month our analysis of National Confidential Inquiry data, in collaboration with the NCISH team at the University of Manchester, was published in the US journal Psychiatric Services. This found that relatives of psychiatric patients who died by suicide from 2003 to 2012 were not contacted after the death by members of the mental health team in 33% of cases. In our analysis we had hypothesised that specific, potentially stigmatizing, patient characteristics would influence whether the family was contacted after a psychiatric patient’s suicide. We found that a patient’s forensic history, unemployment, and primary diagnosis of alcohol or drug dependence or misuse were independently associated with a reduced likelihood of staff contacting the relatives in the event of their suicide. We noted that these were markers for suicide risk in themselves. However, minority ethnic group, and recent alcohol or drug misuse were not associated with staff contacting relatives. Violent method of suicide was associated with an increased likelihood of being contacted.

We felt these findings suggested that relatives experience inequities in access to support after a potentially traumatic bereavement. This was a concern given the recognised association of suicide bereavement with suicide attempt, and the possibility that patients’ relatives share risk factors for suicide. Mental health trusts should use these findings to revise their policies on serious and untoward incidents; incorporating protocols for the provision of support to relatives and to trust employees after a patient’s suicide. Considering the impact on fellow patients, whether on wards or in social networks, is also important. Resources such as Help is at Hand, published by Public Health England in 2015, list organisations providing support and information and should be disseminated where indicated. Recent commissioning guidance published by Public Health England makes recommendations, informed by our research, on delivering support after a suicide as part of a wider suicide prevention strategy.

I am grateful to Isabelle Hunt, Sharon McDonnell, Louis Appleby and Nav Kapur at NCISH for agreeing to this collaboration. We presented the findings at the RCPsych General Adult Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry joint faculties’ annual conference in Birmingham in October 2016, which was an opportunity to disseminate the findings to clinicians. Onwards dissemination to mental health staff and clinical leaders has the potential to improve the support offered to people bereaved by suicide, in keeping with national suicide prevention strategy.


Click this link to access the article.

Citation

  • Pitman A, Hunt I, McDonnell S, Appleby L, Kapur N.  (2017) Support for Relatives Bereaved by Psychiatric Patient Suicide: National Confidential Inquiry Into Suicide and Homicide Findings Psychiatric Services 68(4); 337-344 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201600004

References