Search results

This study aims to reflect upon the first wave of training of Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs), a new National Health Service role to provide support for Children and Young People (CYP) with low and moderate mental health needs in education settings in England. The study specifically focusses on the training for EMHPs in relation to their support for CYP who identify themselves as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME), refugees or from the traveller community.

A brief review of the policy and literature on the role and remit of EMHPs was undertaken, including an exploration of the current status of BAME, refugee and traveller community CYP in schools in England. The review was then related to the specific experience of the author within the context of teaching EMHP trainees in a higher educational setting and evaluated as developing outcomes in low-intensity school-based practice.

There are benefits for trainee EMHPs to have an understanding of the minority groups of CYP attending schools in the area their Mental Health Support Team (MHST) covers. There are benefits for the MHST to form relationships with minority groups at an early stage in the MHST formation. Adapting the EMHP curriculum at a local level to include specific training on the needs of minority groups supports the development of relationships between schools and the communities they engage with locally. Ongoing training should be provided by services focussing on the specific needs of minority groups in their MHST area.

Involving minority groups in education in the formation of MHST and the training of EMHPs may improve outcomes in developing therapeutic relationships with CYP. Developing engagement practices in MHSTs with higher education providers, begins the process early in the experience of EMHP trainees, providing a safe environment in which to develop engagement skills.

Mental health interventions for Italian prisoners with mental disorders remain a problematic issue, despite radical changes in general psychiatric care and a 2008 major government reform transferring mental health care in prison to the National Health Service. The aim of this study is to describe the mental health intervention model implemented since January 2020 for prisoners allocated in the Parma Penitentiary Institutes (PPI). This approach is specifically based on specialized, “person-centered” and “person-tailored” therapeutic-rehabilitation plans in line with psychiatric treatments usually provided in community mental health-care centers of the Parma Department of Mental Health.

All the processes and procedures included in the PPI intervention model were first carefully illustrated, paying special attention to the service for newly admitted prisoners and each typology of specialized therapeutic-rehabilitation treatment potentially provided. Additionally, a preliminary descriptive process analysis of the first six months of clinical activity was also performed.

Since January 2020, 178 individuals entered the PPI service for newly admitted prisoners. In total, 83 (46.7%) of them were engaged in the services of the PPI mental health-care team (35 with pathological addiction and 48 with mental disorders): 56 prisoners were offered an integrated mental health intervention and 27 exclusively an individual psychological or psychiatric treatment.

The results support the potential applicability of an integrated mental health intervention in prison, planning a person-tailored rehabilitation in close collaboration with the prisoners, their families and the local mental health/social services.

Support for individualism can leave marginalised people feeling even more isolated and hopeless. Families often attempt to help but can soon become emotionally depleted. The ‘secondary family’, created when community agencies partner with one another, can offer hope for stabilisation, if not recovery, for individuals living with mental illness. This article describes a Canadian programme where crisis services are working with police to de‐escalate psychiatric crisis. Shared goals bring crisis staff and police together to provide compassion, support and follow‐up.

This paper proposes a model for a dual diagnosis service within a male local prison. Dual diagnosis can be considered usual rather than exceptional within the establishment and indeed within the prison estate. For a variety of reasons, it is found that effective dual diagnosis service delivery represents core business for a range of stakeholders. The dual diagnosis definition preferred is ‘a mental disorder and substance misuse problem in the same person at the same time’. Analysis of the strengths of current service provision and the risks to the development of a new service model are explored through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Current literature and policies inform the model, and it is concluded that a dual diagnosis service can be implemented mostly within existing resources. An implementation schedule highlights one such pathway. Stakeholders were consulted and generally found to be receptive.