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The second chapter of this text provides an introduction to policy relating to mental health, addiction and dual diagnosis from three jurisdictions [Ireland, UK and Australia], chosen because of their close links to Irish people and mental health service provision. The chapter begins with an introduction, reflecting on key points raised in Chapter 1 and how they are relevant to this present chapter. A critical exploration of the policies within these three jurisdictional areas is then presented to highlight the strategic direction of mental health and addiction service provision within the three jurisdictions. This includes the acknowledgement that mental health and addiction services need to be integrated as the presence of dual diagnosis in modern society increases at an alarming rate. Finally, this chapter concludes with a link to each of the policies mentioned herein for those who wish to explore these issues further.

The training and education of peers represents an important milestone in the peer's journey to work within organisational settings. Historically, peer support occurred based on a mutual relationship whereby one peer often with more experience provided support and guidance to another. However, as peers began to move into organisations staffed by professionals, a standard of training and education became needed if peers were to be accepted. This chapter outlines these issues, as well as discussing the training standards, the academics and soft skills needed. Some of the challenges peers face during their education and their continued development will be discussed. This chapter will focus on the training of peers for mental health and substance use settings in addition to other emerging areas in social inclusion.

This chapter describes and analyzes a project offering university-based courses to local people with mental health problems. Converge is a partnership between York St John University and the National Health Service (NHS) that is built on a convergence of interests of the two organizations: real world experience for university students and good quality, non-stigmatizing courses for people with mental health problems. Three key principles of the project will be considered: to work with participants as students and to frame the provision as education, not therapy; to involve university students in the delivery of the courses and in the support of participants; and to work closely with the university and mental health providers in order to offer a resource that supports social integration and recovery.

It will be proposed that this partnership provides the conditions for the creation of a “healing campus”: an attempt to heal the “fracture” between people who experience mental health problems and their communities that began with their disappearance into large mental hospitals in the 18th and 19th centuries. The healing that this chapter examines is not merely of people who identify as having mental health problems but of a social and cultural fracture revealed in the stigma and shame that still surrounds mental ill health.

This chapter offers a prospective and naturalistic study of the impact of a risk-assessment and risk-management program on mentally abnormal young offenders admitted to a medium secure adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit in the United Kingdom (U.K.) because of violent, dangerous or self-harming behaviour. As a result of the risk assessment, there was a reduction in their violent, dangerous or self-harming behaviour that was significantly associated with a reduction in the number of risk factors. About 80% were discharged directly back into the community.

Social and economic trends toward local governance form the context for health and mental health policy and the reorganization of care systems for cost-containment in the United States. Local management of public–private collaborations is promoted by state agencies as a means of rationalizing mental health care and community support services. This chapter analyses the local process of developing public–private partnerships for mental health care, based on an ethnographic case study of county Mental Health/Mental Retardation and behavioral health committees and coalitions in Texas, from 1995 to 2001. Following this period, local service agencies continued collaboration to increase community awareness and resources for care. Findings were that while the rapid transition to local control under conditions of reduced resources impeded implementation of a public–private mental health care system, commitment to a service safety net for persons with mental disabilities was sustained.

It has been long understood that there are expectations that leaders support the wellbeing of their followers but when it comes to followers’ support for the wellbeing of leaders, this is less appreciated. This chapter offers insight from the research into wellbeing practices focused on faculty colleagues in the higher education. Using a sample of 254 faculty members with distinguishing administrative and non-administrative roles, as proxies for leaders and followers, the authors conducted a study on how higher education administrative faculty and non-administrative faculty members supported each other in terms of wellbeing. Based on this study, the authors present a chapter that explores the relational aspects of workplace wellbeing, how people feel at work, what worries them, their perceived marginal value from relationship with colleagues, marginal wellbeing issues and their mood state conditions, the minimization of distress, and the optimization of workplace wellbeing. The premise was that colleagues in these two role sets need to support the wellbeing of each other despite their roles and the authors set out to learn from both what this looked like in the lived experiences.

As other researchers have done previously, we conceptualize innovation not as a linear process but as a cyclical one (e.g., Van de Ven, Polley, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999), which consist periods of innovation initiation, implementation, adaptation, and stabilization (West, 1990). Within this cycle it is possible to distinguish two major components: the beginning of the cycle, which is dominated by the generation of ideas that is generally also designated as creativity; whereas the dominant activity at the end of the cycle which is the implementation of ideas (hereafter referred to as the implementation of innovation). Creativity is then likely to be most evident in the early stages of the innovation process, when those in teams are required to develop or offer ideas in response to a perceived need for innovation. Creative thinking is also likely when teams proactively initiate proposals for change and consider their initial implementation. As the innovation is adapted to organizational circumstances, there is less need for creativity. At the outset of the process, creativity dominates, to be superseded later by innovation implementation processes. Of course, it can be argued that creativity is important throughout the innovation process, but in general, the requirements for creative ideas will be greater at the earlier stages of the innovation process than the later stages.

The chapter examines the ways in which qualitative and quantitative methods support each other in research on occupational stress. Qualitative methods include eliciting from workers unconstrained descriptions of work experiences, careful first-hand observations of the workplace, and participant-observers describing “from the inside” a particular work experience. The chapter shows how qualitative research plays a role in (a) stimulating theory development, (b) generating hypotheses, (c) identifying heretofore researcher-neglected job stressors and coping responses, (d) explaining difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, and (e) providing rich descriptions of stressful transactions. Extensive examples from research on job stress in teachers are used. The limitations of qualitative research, particularly in the area of verification, are also described.