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The first autism‐specific piece of legislation in England and Wales, the Autism Bill, put forward by Cheryl Gillan as a private member's bill, has now gone forward to House of Commons committee stage, after attracting almost universal support among MPs, charities and the media. It seeks to redress the widespread lack of local authority provision for the needs of people with autism (defined in the Bill as including all autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger's Syndrome): children, adults (defined as those over 18) and their families. Currently, despite legislative and policy provision for the disabled, many autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children are without appropriate education or assistance before, during and after the transition to adulthood. At least a third of adults with ASD were estimated in the National Autistic Society's report I Exist to be suffering from serious mental health difficulties as a result of lack of support, while families and carers of adults with ASD have been found to be frequently unable to obtain assistance (Rosenblatt, 2008). This article will provide details of the Bill before considering its implications for ASD children, adults and their families.

Should those of us who are neurologically atypical be diagnosed as ill, so in need of treatment or cure, or accepted as embodying a different way of being, as called for by the neurodiversity movement? We consider what legal structures and health and social care systems would be appropriate to promote neurodiversity, and how far this infrastructure in the United Kingdom today meets these criteria for those diagnosed with cognitive disability and learning disability.

The purpose in writing this paper is to highlight the lack of knowledge of many who are involved in capacity assessments, especially non‐professionals such as carers of the learning disabled, and the view that current guidance for capacity assessments does not take into account issues of emotionality.

The approach is to discuss current guidance and practice, and to offer academic criticism and explanation.

The findings include the discovery that the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice suggests that healthcare professionals and family/carers may undertake assessments of decision‐making capacity, yet the guidance it provides for their doing so overlooks salient issues. Many of those involved in the daily lives of those, who may lack decision‐making capacity (and thus be seen as legally incompetent) such as the learning disabled, demented, mentally ill and neurodiverse, must decide whether to respect their decisions as competent, or to disregard the decisions on the grounds of incompetence and to act in the person's best interests. As many will lack training in their clinical and legal responsibilities and liabilities, it is crucial that they, and those they care for, are protected by not only an increased knowledge of mental capacity legislation and practice, but also how it may apply to questions of emotionality and neurodiversity.

This paper expands and builds on the authors' previous research into including emotionality in assessments of capacity, and will be of use to practitioners in the field of learning disability, and other psychiatric specialities.

The aim is to provide a brief overview of a series of articles tracing the emergence of several Mental Health Commissions (MHCs) in developed countries over recent years, sometimes to enhance mental health law administration, but often in connection with mental health reform strategies. The paper seeks to review the functions of, and elicit a framework for, Mental Health Commissions (MHCs) as effective vehicles for effective operation and reform of a mental health service system.

The approach of the paper is to identify the functions and limitations of Mental Health Commissions and then cluster them to form a typology of commissions.

There are broadly three types of MHCs: the first is more inspectorial and focussed on issues, concerns and complaints affecting the care of individuals, and is more restricted investigating the mental health service and the workings of mental health laws mainly to these ends; the second type is focussed on the entire mental health service system, including relevant all‐of‐government operations, concentrating on monitoring for and promoting system‐wide reform. While this appears to constitute a spectrum, with different MHCs mandated to work mainly at either end of it, there is conceivably a third type which has a combination of these functions. This occurs with some commissions, though an equal balance between these functions is unusual, so they usually can be assigned to a type on the basis of their predominant functions.

There was a limited sample size, obliging a non‐statistical descriptive analysis which may well affect the validity of these distinctions.

There is sometimes a combination of functions encompassing some features of both of these types. While type I MHCs can ensure that individual rights are upheld and that mental health laws and regulations are adhered to, to improve service quality, type II MHCs are likely to be more effective in achieving system‐wide mental health service reform.

MHCs can contribute to more holistic, evidence‐based and recovery‐oriented service delivery, which are more likely to lead to more desirable health and wellbeing outcomes for all mental health service users, their families and the community.

This typology provides a useful provisional framework for understanding the roles of MHCs in mental health services and in reform of the whole mental health service system and related systems.

Libraries supporting a forensic psychology undergraduate and/or graduate level college program need to collect materials from a range of disciplines – psychology, law, psychiatry and criminal justice. This guide identifies the major reference works, journals, databases and other resources that should be in a good forensic psychology collection.

So much has been written about addiction, one can reasonably ask why we need another volume on the subject now. The pieces gathered here take up a number of current trends that make this exactly the right time to take a fresh look at addiction. These include: debates over the nosology of addiction as part of the revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); the expansion of addiction's meaning and spheres of control beyond alcohol and illicit substances; the rise of neuroscience; the increasing ‘pharmaceuticalization’ of everyday life and new pharmaceutical treatments for addiction; growing awareness about the intersection of the drug war and the mass incarceration of people of color; and new theoretical frameworks for understanding the role of addiction as a fundamental technique of social control. These trends are reshaping addiction in both new and not-so-new ways that warrant the interrogation this volume provides.

The purpose of this paper is to use a descriptive case study to establish how collaboration, innovation and knowledge‐management strategies have scaled‐up learning and development in rural, remote and other resource‐constrained Canadian delivery settings.

Intervention design was realized through a one‐time, collaborative, national capacity‐building project. A project portfolio of 72 sub‐projects, initiatives and strategic activities was used to improve access, enhance quality and create capacity for palliative and end‐of‐life care services. Evaluation was multifaceted, including participatory action research, variance analysis and impact analysis. This has been supplemented by post‐intervention critical reflection and integration of relevant literature.

The purposeful use of collaboration, innovation and knowledge‐management strategies have been successfully used to support a rapid scaling‐up of learning and development interventions. This has enabled enhanced and new pan‐Canadian health delivery capacity implemented at the local service delivery catchment‐level.

The intervention is bounded by a Canada‐specific socio‐cultural/political context. Design variables and antecedent conditions may not be present and/or readily replicated in other nation‐state contexts. The findings suggest opportunities for future integrative and applied health services and policy research, including collaborative inquiry that weaves together concepts from adult learning, social science and industrial engineering.

Scaling‐up for new capacity is ideally approached as a holistic, multi‐faceted process which considers the total assets within delivery systems, service catchments and communities as potentially being engaged and deployed.

The Pallium Integrated Capacity‐building Initiative offers model elements useful to others seeking theory‐informed practices to rapidly and effectively scale‐up learning and development efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology was applied to a medical records department (MRD) of a hospital in India to reduce the Turn-Around-Time (TAT) of medical records preparation process and thus to improve the productivity and performance of the department.

The research reported in this paper is based on a case study carried out using LSS approach and in improving the medical records preparation process.

The root causes for the problem were identified and validated through data-based analysis from LSS tool box, at different stages in the project. As a result of this project, the TAT was reduced from average 19 minutes to eight minutes and the standard deviation was reduced by one-tenth, which was a remarkable achievement for department under study. This was resulted in the reduction in the work-in-process inventory of medical records from 40 units to 0 at the end of the day. Project in-turn reduced the staffing level from the earlier level of six to a current level of four.

The paper is based on a single case study executed in IP-MRD of a single hospital and hence there is limitation in generalizing the specific results from the study. But the approach adopted and the learning from this study can be generalized.

This paper will be helpful for those professionals who are interested in implementing LSS to healthcare organization to improve the productivity and performance.

Purpose – To explore the ideological effects and social control potential of diagnostic biopsychiatry and encourage the sociology of diagnosis to retain key insights of early medicalization scholarship.

Methodology – As the sociology of diagnosis emerges from medicalization, it is imperative that the new sub-specialty retains the critical edge of the early scholarship. With this in mind the paper reviews key aspects of the medicalization thesis, emphasizing the links between medical definitions and social control processes (e.g. Conrad, 1992; Conrad & Schneider, 1992; Zola, 1972). Based on this review scholars are urged to be mindful of the “diagnostic imaginary” -- a way of thinking that conceals the presence of the social in diagnoses, and which closes off critical analysis of the existential-connectedness and political nature of diagnoses.

Findings – The paradigm shift from dynamic to diagnostic psychiatry in DSM-III opened the door to a new biomedical model that has enhanced American psychiatry's scientific aura and prestige. With the increased presence and ordinariness of diagnoses in everyday life, an illusory view of diagnoses as scientific entities free of cultural ties has emerged, intensifying the dangers of medical social control.

Social implications – By illustrating that diagnoses are cultural objects imbued with political meaning, the ideological effects and social control potential of diagnostic biopsychiatry may be mitigated.