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The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study considering the application of the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). Practitioners from a range of professions were recruited to provide their views of how to respond to a variety of scenarios. GPs, nurses, social workers, physio/occupational therapists and care assistants were recruited to participate.

This study used the Delphi method to elicit participant views and generate consensus of opinion. The Delphi method recommends a large sample for heterogeneous groups, and round one had 98 participants from six different professional groups.

Participants did not respond consistently to the scenarios, but disagreed most significantly when patient decisions conflicted with clinical advice, and when to conduct a capacity assessment. These responses suggest that clinical responses vary significantly between individuals (even within settings or professions), and that the application of Mental Capacity Act (MCA) is complicated and nuanced, requiring time for reflection to avoid paternalistic clinical interventions.

Previous studies have not used a Delphi method to consider the application of MCA/DoLS. Because of this methods focus on developing consensus, it is uniquely suited to considering this practice issue. As a result, these findings present more developed understanding of the complexity and challenges for practitioner responses to some relatively common clinical scenarios, suggesting the need for greater clarity for practitioners.

Perinatal mental health (PMH) is acknowledged as a significant public health issue associated with significant personal, family, social and economic burden. Research demonstrates that healthcare practitioners lack knowledge and confidence in this area but there is likely to be a complexity of factors that may influence practitioner behaviours, including negative attitudes towards people with mental health and inaccurate illness perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Perinatal Illness Perceptions Scale (PIPS), a conceptual derivation of the Illness Perception Questionnaire – Revised.

A cross-sectional and exploratory instrument development design, using exploratory factor analysis, was employed.

The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties revealing three sub-scales: causes, consequences (mother); consequences (baby).

The findings implicate the PIPS as the first robust psychometric measure, which can be used to in the assessment of practitioner knowledge of the causes and consequences of PMH. The PIPS could offer the opportunity to assess these domains within both educational and training context and identify practitioner attitudes which may affect clinical decision making and referral decisions.

The School of Training for Trainers is a national programme for training managers, training advisers, training administrators, training officers and training consultants. It is a user‐pays institution, open to training professionals in the private and public sectors. As well as comprising a comprehensive, flexible, modular training programme, it is practical, skills based, and features action method as its basic methodology.

A contemporary review of the psychometric properties of the Buss‐Perry Aggression Questionnaire was undertaken to assess its suitability for an alcohol dependent population. Three criteria were used to try to achieve this: factor analysis; internal consistency reliability; and test‐retest reliability. Factor analysis revealed that its structure is remarkably consistent in a number of populations. Internal consistency reliability and test‐retest reliability results scores proved to be mainly above the recommended threshold. A conclusion was reached regarding these results that the Buss‐Perry Aggression Questionnaire is an effective screening tool for aggression in an alcohol dependent population.

This paper discusses the concept of training trainers in the skills they need to perform competently as trainers, and how they follow up their skills mastery with discussion on their new theoretical insight. The focus is on skills mastery first and then theory acquisition as a consequence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how injecting opiate users on a methadone treatment programme experience stigma as drug addicts, and as service users in health care and pharmacy settings. In particular the paper explores the rationale for injecting drugs, which the paper is argued to create the conditions for experiencing shame at the micro interactional level, influenced by macro institutional factors. The paper links this issue of being an injecting drug user in treatment to question whether the definition of recovery as “drug free” in the Scottish drug policy document The Road to Recovery (2008) creates the potential for stigma of service users receiving methadone maintenance treatment.

In all, 14 participants, all of whom identified themselves as problem intravenous users of drugs, were recruited from three voluntary sector (third sector) treatment agencies in Scotland. Participants took part in semi-structured interviews; these were recorded, transcribed and qualitatively analysed thematically.

Participants describe feelings of stigma in relation to their drug taking as problem users. Their experiences as recovering opiate injectors raises further challenges in distancing themselves from stigmatised addict identities.

Reasons for injecting rather than smoking heroin were principally financially challenging a widely held belief that users inject primarily for pleasure, which is argued as increasing the potential for stigma. Shame and perceived discrimination was documented before and during drug treatment.

Reports on quality of life (QOL) measures for forensic patients are severely limited. The present paper aims to consider how to assess chronic patient's well‐being and to identify and evaluate the content validity of measures used to assess health‐related QOL in psychosis.

A review was undertaken to gather information on the different QOL measures from relevant databases, exploring their strengths and weaknesses.

Results from the review indicate a broad range of assessment tools are used in practice, although very few have been used in forensic settings. A preference for subjective tools is emerging, in addition to patient rated scales as opposed to clinician rated scales.

The application of QOL measures in the forensic population is of particular interest and a relatively new area of study, thus of value to practicing clinicians. It is hoped that the use of appropriate tools will enhance understanding of the treatment and service needs for mentally disordered offenders.

This study explored the perspectives of low‐level drug market users on the availability, purchase and consumption of illicit drugs within the social context of drug prohibition. A snowballing technique was used to recruit 16 participants consisting of nine males and seven females aged between 17 and 43. A semi‐structured interview process elicited their views on their use of drugs, where they obtained them, their views on the impact of the criminal justice system on their drug use and finally their views on how drug users were perceived by non‐drug users. While some negative consequences of using drugs were reported, no participant considered that their use of drugs made them an addict, a criminal or antisocial. The findings from this study suggest that current punitive drug policy, which links drug use with addiction, crime and antisocial behaviour was inconsistent with the experience of the participants.

Attempts to place the debate over the introduction of the community charge in the more analytical framework of economic theory. Argues that the community charge has disadvantages in terms both of equity and efficiency. Considers the wider effects of the abolition of domestic rates on the housing market. Using a case study, examines the feasibility of an alternative local taxation system based on capital values.

This paper aims to look at some of the evidence that supports the construct of resilience and the operationalisation of the “phenomena” of resilience within contemporary society. The concept of resilience has become an influential and society-wide construct, embraced by the positive psychology movement and impacting on educational, health and social policy significantly and demonstrably. Importantly, the concept of resilience has a substantial historical heritage and legacy and the permeation of the construct within the collective social consciousness is rarely considered or queried, but generally accepted and embraced. Moreover, the construct of resilience within itself is invariably couched within contemporary discourse as a universal good and highly desirable attribute and further still, considered by many as a fundamental component contributing to the fabric of an individual’s character.

The design of this paper is a short review of selective evidence of key conceptual issues.

Resilience as a concept, is defuse, generally ill-defined and highly subjective. The concept of resilience, though popular and intrinsic to a number of aspects of public and educational policy, remains controversial, provides an explanatory account of differential outcomes which may not always be positive and, importantly, may potentially disenfranchise the individual.

The synthesis of the brief and selective appraisal of evidence in this area suggests that the concept of resilience, if it exists at all, is highly mercurial, ambiguous in definition and despite its omnipresence as a representation of a positive and internalised attribution to the individual, has a significant negative side which is seldom considered. Querying the concept of resilience against the overwhelming backdrop of positive belief and opinion regarding the concept may represent a social heresy, however, the balance of evidence would suggest a debate about the concept is long overdue and, moreover, the concept itself provides a useful fulcrum to consider where beliefs, attitudes and opinions about abstract concepts stop and science, evidence and fact-based reflection begin.