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This paper aims to present the findings of research commissioned by a Primary Care Trust in the UK to assess the implementation of a new pilot Human Givens mental health service (HGS) within primary care.

Participating General Practitioners practices were designated as either “Human givens” or “Control” practices. The study focused on service users with mild to moderate depressed mood measured using HADS. The well-being of these participants was examined at the point of referral, and after four, eight and 12 months using three well-being questionnaires.

The results revealed that emotional well-being significantly improved during the first four months following referral for both groups and this improvement was maintained up to and including one year post referral. Compared to the Control group Human givens therapy was found to be of shorter duration, lasting one or two sessions compared to standard treatment which lasted on average four sessions.

Apart from the psychological insight and emotional support, it is suggested that Human givens therapy might help the client to better function in society and maintain a sense of social integration. This has benefits to other providers of social care.

Through consultation with people living with dementia and carers, this paper aims to identify skills that patients and carers feel need to be developed in the workforce. This work is part of a project to develop competencies for the West Midlands dementia workforce.

People living with a dementia and carers were contacted through cafés, a carers' group and memory group, and two people contributed interviews to the analysis. All materials were analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

Feedback was received from 69 individuals. In total, six major themes were identified: knowledge about dementia, person centred care, communication, relationships, support and helping people engage in activities.

It is argued that people living with dementia and carers bring unique and valuable perspectives to an analysis of the skills of the dementia workforce, which grounds the required skills in the relationship between the worker and the person and family they are working with. This different emphasis needs to be considered and addressed throughout dementia training and education.

This paper reviews the current evidence base for human givens therapy in the context of mental health. A systematic literature search was conducted from which it is concluded that the evidence base for human givens therapy is currently limited: most evidence proffered is expert opinion supported with brief case studies or anecdotal evidence, with the exception of two descriptive studies both concerning trauma and the rewind technique. This paper calls for further research to be undertaken to examine the effectiveness of human givens therapy and for mainstream mental health, counselling and psychotherapy journals to provide space for healthy debate.

To broaden the range of well-being outcomes that can be measured for patients with depressed mood and/or other mental health issues the aim is to determine the reliability and validity of a self-reported instrument that was designed by the Human Givens Institute to evaluate emotional distress (emotional needs audit – ENA).

The ENA was administered to 176 patients, aged between 18-65 years (mean age: 39.2 years). The acceptability of the ENA was examined as well as its internal consistency (Cronbach ' s alphas). ENA was administered at four time points and test-retest reliability was conducted between times 1 and 2. The data from three scales also administered to these patients (SWLS, CORE-OM and HADS) were used to aid the conduct of the ENA construct validity (concurrent and discriminant). Analysis of the ENA sensitivity/specificity was also performed.

All the ENA items (except one) were shown to have good acceptability. The internal consistency was also very strong (Cronbach ' s alpha: 0.84); the construct validity also revealed positive results for the ENA: concurrent validity (r=0.51-0.62; p < 0.001); discriminant validity (r=0.22-0.28; p < 0.01). Test-retest reliability was r=0.46 (p < 0.001). Finally, ENA demonstrated high sensitivity (80 per cent), and moderate specificity (35 per cent).

ENA was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring wellbeing, quality of life and emotional distress. It also allows insight into the causes of symptoms, dissatisfaction and distress. It is suggested that this tool has complementarity to standardised tools when used in clinical practice.