Improving the Physical Health of People with Serious Mental Illness: A Practical Toolkit (May 2016)

Summary

Between 2014 and 2016, NHS England worked with staff and patients in four mental health trusts to improve the cardiovascular (CVD) health outcomes and reduce premature mortality in people with serious mental illness. This toolkit is based on the independent evaluation by the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the four NHS England pilot sites

Content

The materials included in this toolkit are all practical, local resources. Readers are encouraged to consider, adopt or adapt the content as locally appropriate, and to acknowledge and reference the relevant trust accordingly.

This toolkit is designed to help other mental health trusts implement the Lester tool, using a combination of detailed case studies, short examples and supporting documents provided by each pilot site. By sharing the pilot sites’ own material (such as physical health policies, example job descriptions and lists of equipment), we hope that other trusts will be able to use these as the basis for their own materials – without needing to start from scratch.