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 at Work'.

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

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. Life Beyond the Cubicle: eLearning to support working well with families during mental health crises

A set of eLearning modules designed to educate and update clinicians on the importance of involving families wherever possible during mental health crises to improve patient care, avoid harm and reduce deaths. They were developed as a partnership between Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Making Families Count, with funding from NHS England South East Region (HEE legacy funds).  The resources have been co-produced by people with lived experience as patients, family carers and clinicians, supported by an Advisory Group drawn from a wide range of expertise, tested in eleven NHS Trusts and independently evaluated.  

3. Mental health crises: how to improve care

In May 2024, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Evidence held a webinar on care for adults in mental health crisis. The webinar shared research findings on what works in community crisis care, how acute day units compare to crisis resolution teams and whether peer-supported self-management can reduce acute readmissions. This Collection summarises the 3 research projects presented at the webinar. It includes video clips from the speakers and incorporates quotes from the day. The information will be useful for anyone involved in commissioning or delivering mental health crisis services.

4. Self-harm: assessment, management and preventing recurrence

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.

5. 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.

6. 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.  

7. 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.”

8. 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.

9. 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.

10 How can our team move past a traumatic event?

After an extreme traumatic event there are things that you can do to help yourself, and your colleagues, to move on. Fiona Day, medical and public health leadership coach and chartered coaching psychologist, Stacey Killick, consultant paediatrician at Glan Clwyd Hospital, and Lucy Easthope, professor in practice at Durham University’s Institute of Hazard, Risk, and Resilience and adviser on disaster recovery give their tips in this BMJ article.

11. 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.

12 Vicarious trauma: The invisible epidemic

In healthcare, an insidious epidemic lurks beneath the surface, affecting the very individuals tasked with providing care: vicarious trauma by empathy. Despite its profound impact, this phenomenon remains largely unrecognised and under-discussed within the sector. As leaders, it is imperative that we shed light on this invisible trauma and acknowledge it as one of the greatest challenges facing our industry, as Margarida Pacheco explains in this blog.

13 Beyond stereotypes: A lived experience guide to navigating support for disordered eating

Disordered eating can affect anyone, but it can be confusing to understand and recognise it in our own personal experiences. This guide, published by East London NHS Foundation Trust, is a snapshot of how adults in East London have navigated those experiences of uncertainty while seeking support for disordered eating. For many of the contributors, preconceptions about what an eating disorder is (or isn’t) have previously acted as a barrier to seeking or receiving support. It also contains advice on how to seek support for disordered eating.

14. 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.

15. Learning how to protect the health system by protecting the caregivers

This commentary in JAMA Network Open looks at the increasingly recognised problem of burnout among US healthcare professionals. General Social Survey data suggest that almost one-half of US health care workers experienced symptoms of burnout often or very often in 2022, up from less than one-third in 2018. The article explores research that demonstrates the extent of the issue and highlights studies looking at ways to reduce burnout. The authors conclude that systemic change will be required to tackle the issue.

17. Time for a rebalance: psychological and emotional well-being in the healthcare workforce as the foundation for patient safety

In this editorial for BMJ Quality and Safety, Kate Kirk explains why staff well-being is the foundation to improving patient safety.

18. Putting the writing on the wall: Explaining work as imagined vs work as done (by Claire Cox)

Claire Cox, Patient Safety Lead at Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, shares a recent technique she used to look at the pathway for a patient coming to A&E who also had a mental health issue, highlighting the safety risks of competing guidance and the importance of co-production. She explains the difference between 'work as imagined' and 'work as done'. 

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