The enquiry was launched following the publication of Mental Health and the Economic Downturn in November 2009 – a piece of joint work carried out between the Royal College of Psychiatrists, NHS Confederation and the London School of Economics. The enquiry represents a serious effort to consider service redesign in mental healthcare, and give voice to the people who work at the heart of our mental health services.
More than 50 psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, commissioners, trust chief executives, academics, health economists, voluntary sector chief executives, service users, carers, medical directors and national mental health programme leads gave evidence to the enquiry. The resulting paper, Looking Ahead: Future development of UK mental health services, makes recommendations based on their views.
The paper is a distillation of the views of more than 50 psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, commissioners, trust chief executives, academics, health economists, voluntary sector organisation chief executives, service users, carers, medical directors and national mental health programme leads.
The contributors were asked to consider a number of areas, including:
- positives and negatives from the past 10 years of mental health service reform
- how best to organise services to provide the best outcomes for service users
- reconciling tensions between generalist and specialist approaches to care
- how best to achieve effective collaboration between different health services
- how to better manage transitions between services, or parts of a service, to ensure comprehensive care and continuity for service users
- how to better integrate health, social care, non-statutory/voluntary sector, employment and criminal justice services.
For further information and to download the summary visit the Royal College of Psychiatrists website.