'GlobalMinds' - NHS study severe mental health problems

Together we can change lives

Depression, bipolar, schizophrenia and related conditions affect millions of people around the world.

Yet mental health receives less than 1% of global research funding. 

This has left healthcare for these conditions stuck in the past:

Diagnosis can take years

Treatments target symptoms, not underlying causes

Half of the prescribed drugs cause severe side effects

GlobalMinds is a major research programme seeking to advance the understanding of mental health conditions and improve lives.

 

My source: 
News, NHS study to transform mental health treatment, The Times, 14 February, 2026, p.6

Consultation: Community Mental Health Services [ UK Parliament ]

Source: Health and Social Care Committee, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

'Community Mental Health Services

Inquiry

The Committee is undertaking an inquiry into community mental health services. The inquiry will examine what good looks like from the perspective of service users and their families/carers. The Committee would like the inquiry to shine a light on case studies of innovative practice and high-quality care across the country, and to undertake meaningful and impactful engagement with people accessing these services. 

The inquiry will consider how service users’ wider health and social needs can be addressed, including in employment and housing, and to understand what policy interventions are required to improve how these needs are met. As part of this inquiry, the Committee also wants to assess to what extent the Community Mental Health Framework is driving improvements in the delivery of more integrated, person-centred care. 

This inquiry is focussing on adults with severe mental health needs in particular, which includes but is not limited to people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and severe depression. The Committee recognises the scale of the challenge in children and young people’s mental health, and plans to do further work in this area in due course, building on its predecessor Committee’s 2021 inquiry. 

In line with the general practice of select committees, the Health and Social Care Committee is not able to take up individual cases or complaints. If you would like political support or advice you may wish to contact your local Member of Parliament.

This inquiry is currently accepting evidence

The committee wants to hear your views. We welcome submissions from anyone with answers to the questions in the call for evidence. You can submit evidence until Tuesday 4 February 2025.' 

Read the call for evidence before submitting:

https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8755/community-mental-health-services/

'What Kingdom' by Fine Gråbøl

client - person - individual - self - patient

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

What Kingdom

'Gråbøl was lucky. Eventually she started seeing a new psychiatrist, who looked at that record "and was like, "Wow, you receive So much more medicine than all the other people who live there. Why is that?'" She didn't know. Gradually, though, she was able to come off the drugs; and two doctors decided that she didn't, in fact, have borderline personality and bipolar disorders, removing the diagnoses that had shaped her sense of her self. In time, she left the unit and rebuilt her life. She's no longer on medication today, but the ghosts of her past diagnoses haunt her. She wonders whether the conditions are merely in hibernation and she'll wake up one day and enter another depressive episode. She doesn't wish she'd never been diagnosed, but does feel that her doctors underestimated the effect those labels would have on her development. At 17, she points out - the age she was diagnosed as bipolar - most teenagers don't yet know who they are. "You want to find a box or language to define yourself, so that you can close yourself in. And one way of getting that sense is getting into the psychiatric system." Since returning to "normal" life, she has also struggled with survivor's guilt: the feeling that while she made it out of the system, others did not.

'Above all, she wishes that the emphasis would shift away from the suffering individual and onto their broader context. We need to become better, as a society, at making room for people who aren't fully functional citizens. Gråbøl's narrator phrases it as a question: "Could we not imagine treatments that are instead externally directed involving the outside world gearing itself towards a wider and more comprehensive emotional spectrum?" Gråbøl's answer, though, is the same as my own: "I don't know."'

the system citizens?

My source:
Leaf Arbuthnot, Interview. We need to make room for the mentally ill. Review, The Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2024, pp.8-9.

Image:
https://images3.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9781953861849

AffecTech Workshop: Lancaster Tuesday May 14th 2019, 9-1pm

Presented by Lancaster University

Help shape the future of innovative technologies for mental health

We hope you will join us as a guest of Lancaster University, for a special workshop and networking opportunity exploring interactive mental health technologies being developed here in Lancaster. This is a first of a kind opportunity for professionals and public to engage with new prototypes being developed as part of the AffecTech network – a major international research project developing personal technologies for affective health.

Where: Reading and Writing Room, Storey Arts Centre, in Lancaster City Centre
(Next to Lancaster Railway Station)

When: Tuesday May 14th 2019, 9.00 am to 13.30 pm

Why: Learn about personal technologies for affective health, and help shape a major initiative dedicated to delivering self-help technologies to help sufferers of affective health conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.

More information and registration (free). 


[Hope to see you there!]

c/o BMJ Open: Mapping of modifiable barriers and facilitators of medication adherence in bipolar disorder to the Theoretical Domains Framework

Finding this item on twitter c/o @Stuart__Maddock its interest and relevance to me is explicit in the title, but also as a protocol, with more to follow. The range and application of the domains listed and the four themes also have significance here. The abstract includes:

"This systematic review aims to identify modifiable barriers and facilitators (determinants) of medication adherence in bipolar disorder. We also plan to report determinants of medication adherence from perspectives of patients, carers, healthcare professionals and other third parties. A unique feature of this systematic review in the context of mental health is the use of the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to organise the literature identified determinants of medication adherence."

Of course there are many potential overlaps. For example, knowledge; the decision processes - to what extent are they collaborative - studies with patient involvement, also concerned with concordance not just adherence? Are they supported through the use of digital technology? Goals can be multiple as in person - patient centred, to support carers, policy development or an assessment instrument. That 'emotion' is all too readily experienced by families too in the event of relapse.

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

(1) Knowledge (4) Memory, Attention and ... (7) Beliefs about Capabilities, (8) Belief about Consequences (9) Optimism, (10) Intentions (11) Goals, (12) Emotion	... Decision Processes (4) (13) [Physical] Environmental Context and Resources
(2) Skills (3) Social Influences (5) Behavioural Regulation (6) Professional/Social Role and Identity (13) [Social] Environmental Context and Resources (14) [Social] Reinforcement	(13) [Political] Environmental Context and Resources (14) [Political] Reinforcement.

"Within Nvivo V.12, we will create four themes in line with the aim of this study" ...

I have mapped these themes to Hodges' model as follows:

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

Patient Perspective	HealthCare Professional Perspective
Carers Perspective	Others Perspectives

These themes reflect to some degree the original website (1998-2015) introductory pages for potential users (four audiences) of Hodges' model per each care domain, as follows:

INTRA- INTERPERSONAL: Patients, Service users, Clients
SCIENCES: Students, Lecturers, Health care professionals, Researchers, Social workers ...
SOCIOLOGY: Carers, the Public, Communities
POLITICAL: Managers, Policy makers, Law makers ..


See also: Elizabeth Mamo
https://twitter.com/ehmamo/status/1095322471224537092

Prajapati AR, Dima A, Clark AB, et al. Mapping of modifiable barriers and facilitators of medication adherence in bipolar disorder to the Theoretical Domains Framework: a systematic review protocol

BMJ Open 2019;9:e026980. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026980

Lancaster: Launch event for the AffecTech Innovative Training Network

We hope you will join us for a special evening at Lancaster’s beautiful Ashton Memorial Hall to celebrate the launch of AffecTech, a prestigious digital health research initiative.

Where: Ashton Memorial Hall, Williamson Park, Lancaster 

When: Monday September 18th 2017, 7pm-9.30pm 

Why: AffecTech is a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network funded by the European Commission, dedicated to delivering effective low cost self-help technologies to help sufferers of affective health conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorders. Coordinated by Lancaster University, and benefiting from leading European and global partners including the UK’s NHS, Oxford University and technology giant Philips, the goals, scale and expertise of AffecTech is unique, integrating the latest innovations in personal tech for mental health, with the most influential clinical psychology insights into emotion regulation. 

This event is organised by the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University and will be an exclusive opportunity to network with leading partners from the digital health sector, and learn more about innovations in wearable technologies for mental health.

There will be complementary drinks and canapés, music and a full bar.

Please confirm your participation by signing up on Eventbrite (password: AffecTech):

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-event-for-the-affectech-innovative-training-network-tickets-37431209756 … 

We are looking forward to seeing you there. 

For further information and contact details, please visit: http://www.affectech.org/

PRESS RELEASE: Tuesday 5 September 2017

Research into wearables technology set to transform the future of mental healthcare

[ I attended - best wishes to all on a great research journey and initiative.
My source: a direct message from @Affec_Tech ]

AffecTech Launch