We can safely deliver therapy to suicidal inpatients, but we still don’t know if it works

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John Baker reviews a pilot randomised controlled trial of cognitive-behavioural suicide prevention therapy for mental health inpatients, which found that the therapy was acceptable and feasible to deliver.

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Mental health carers: peer-led training, education and support #MentalHealthCarers

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Bethany Gill helps us prepare for the #MentalHealthCarers event by summarising a service evaluation of a peer-led psychoeducation programme which aims to improve mental health carers well-being, reduce burden and enrich empowerment.

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Do general hospital staff stigmatise people with mental illness?

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Rebecca Stevenson writes her debut elf blog on a recent systematic review looking at general hospital health professionals’ attitudes and perceived dangerousness towards patients with comorbid mental and physical health conditions.

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REsTRAIN YOURSELF: reducing restrictive practices on mental health wards #BCTcompare

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Krysia Canvin helps us prepare for the #BCTcompare event on Wed 5th June by blogging about a recent study, which looks at the outcome of a restraint reduction programme (‘REsTRAIN YOURSELF’) to minimise the use of physical restraint in acute mental health services.

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How should we assess suicide risk in mental health services, or should we stop doing it?

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Vishal Bhavsar reports on the development and validation of a new clinical prediction rule (the OxMIS tool), which has been developed by the Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology group at the University of Oxford to help predict the risk of suicide in people with severe mental illness.

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Dementia care in hospital: training, leadership and culture change needed

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Caroline Struthers explores a recent realist review of dementia-friendly interventions to improve the care of people living with dementia admitted to hospitals.

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Quality of general hospital care through the liaison psychiatry lens?

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Kirsten Lawson explores a recent study of liaison psychiatry professionals’ views of general hospital care for patients with mental illness.

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A multitude of systematic reviews on dementia diagnosis

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Clarissa Giebel highlights 5 new Cochrane reviews on dementia diagnosis, focusing on the Mini-Cog, IQCODE and MMSE diagnostic tests.

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We need to empower & educate all stakeholders and provide person-centred care to move LD health care forward and reduce health inequity

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Despite an increasing body of research evidence that demonstrates the ongoing health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities, there have been few changes in policy and practice.

In her debut blog, Rosalyn Hithersay presents a paper that describes a series of workshops that took place in 2013 with the aim of addressing this shift from evidence to action.

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Nuffield Trust offers an insight into the costs of end of life care

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This report from the Nuffield Trust is an important addition to the literature base on end of life care as it attempts to quantify the costs involved in end of life care, from the perspectives of the various services involved.  Although there are limitations to the cost estimates, which are explicitly acknowledged, the findings will [read the full story…]