Top picks for Mental Health Day

Summary

This year, WHO's World Mental Health Day on 10 October will focus on the theme 'Mental health is a universal human right'.

To mark World Mental Health Day, we’ve pulled together 10 resources, blogs and reports from the hub that focus on improving patient safety across different aspects of mental health services.

Content

1. Restraint Reduction Network: Supporting people with lived experience

As all forms of restrictive practice can result in harm, it is important that people are able to identify restrictive practices and challenge their inappropriate use. The Restraint Reduction Network have a range of resources that people with lived experience, parents and carers may find helpful. The resources are designed to support people to understand what restrictive practices are, when and why they might be used, people’s rights, and how to identify and challenge unacceptable and unethical practices.

2. Self-harm: assessment, management and preventing recurrence (NICE, 7 September 2022)

This new guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) covers assessment, management and preventing recurrence for children, young people and adults who have self-harmed. It includes those with a mental health problem, neurodevelopmental disorder or learning disability and applies to all sectors that work with people who have self-harmed.

The guideline sets out some important principles for care and treatment. For example, it states that self-harming patients treated in primary care must receive regular follow-up appointments, regular reviews of self-harm behaviour and a regular medicines review.

3. People with eating disorders should not face stigma in the health system and barriers to accessing support in 2022: A blog by Hope Virgo

In this blog, Hope Virgo, an eating disorder survivor and mental health campaigner, looks at the barriers people face when they try to access support, and talks about her own experience of being told she was ‘not thin enough for support’. She calls for long-overdue action on funding, training and awareness of eating disorders within the NHS.

4. Building community into the integrated care system: A practical toolkit for building robust community mental health care

It is more important than ever that Integrated Care Systems (ICS) invest urgently in community mental health. This report from Rethink Mental Illness summarises the significant challenges facing mental healthcare, provides a toolkit of practical, workable solutions to common barriers to transformation, and explore the role that the VCSE sector can have in pursuing the four core aims and future goals of ICSs.  

5. Rethinking doctors’ mental health and the impact on patient safety: A blog by Ehi Iden

This blog by Ehi Iden, hub topic lead for Occupational Health and Safety, reflects on the increasing workload and pressure healthcare professionals face, the impact this has on patient safety and why we need to start 're-humanising' the workplace. He highlights that, “It takes a safe healthcare worker to deliver safe healthcare to patients.”

6. Strengthening perinatal mental health: A roadmap to the right support at the right time

During pregnancy, and up to one year after birth, one in five women will experience mental health issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to more severe illness. For those women experiencing mental ill-health, barriers often exist preventing them from accessing care, including variation in availability of service, care, and treatment. These are often worsened by cultural stigma, previous trauma, deprivation, and discrimination. This document by the Royal College of Midwives outlines recommendations to ensure that women are offered, and can access, the right support at the right time during their perinatal journey.

7. Zero Suicide Alliance training

The Zero Suicide Alliance is a collaboration of NHS trusts, charities, businesses and individuals who are committed to suicide prevention in the UK and beyond. Their website offers free online training courses to teach people the skills and confidence to have potentially life-saving conversations with someone they’re worried about. They offer short online modules covering general suicide awareness, social isolation and suicide in veterans and university students.

8. Blog: Shifting the dial on mental health support for young black men

In this blog for NHS Confederation, Kadra Abdinasir talks about how mental health services have failed to engage with young black men, and describes how services need to change to overcome the issue. She argues that delivering effective mental health support for young black men requires a move away from a crisis-driven response, to investment in system-driven, community-based projects. 

Kadra looks at learning from Shifting the Dial, a three-year programme recently piloted in Birmingham as a response to the growing and unmet needs of young black men aged 16 to 25. A recent report on the project found that most young men involved in Shifting the Dial reported good outcomes related to their wellbeing, confidence, sense of belonging and understanding of mental health.

9. A mentally healthier nation: Towards a ten-year, cross-government plan for better prevention, equality and support

Along with over 30 organisations with an interest in mental health, the Centre for Mental Health has developed a plan to build a mentally healthier nation. The plan focuses on three key areas: prevention, equality and support. It sets out concrete policies they want to see adopted as part of a ten-year, cross-government mental health strategy.

10. Blog: Why harmful gender stereotypes surrounding men’s approaches towards their feelings need challenging

This blog explores why men are reluctant to seek support when they are struggling with their mental health and why the suicide rate is so high. It looks at initiatives that exist to encourage men to seek help and highlights what more could be done to support mens’ mental health.