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“GoodYarn” is a skills-based workshop that focusses on building mental health literacy in rural communities, members of which are known to experience geographic, attitudinal and service configuration barriers to accessing mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the GoodYarn project on raising mental health literacy in the rural community.

GoodYarn is primarily for farmers, their families and farm workers, as well as the “farmer facing” workforce. The focus on mental health literacy aligns with the mental health promotion approach of using methods that foster supportive environments. By raising the mental health literacy of those not directly needing help, but in positions to help those that do – such as employers, rural professionals and rural support industries who are well placed to perceive stressors in farmers – GoodYarn builds a community with the knowledge and skills to identify and approach those experiencing mental distress or illness, and direct them to appropriate support and services. All participants in the GoodYarn workshops (n=430) were invited to complete a questionnaire at the end of the workshop. All participants answered the questionnaire, with over 80 per cent answering all questions.

Participant feedback affirmed the utility of GoodYarn as an effective vehicle to facilitate the discussion of mental illness in rural farming communities of New Zealand. GoodYarn had a significant positive impact on the three immediate workshop indicators of awareness, confidence and knowledge (p<0.001 for all three indicators). Further, the high level of concordance in workshop outcomes across various organisations’ delivery indicates programme consistency and quality has been maintained throughout the upscaling of the programme.

The uptake of the GoodYarn programme by rural organisations and communities at a national level, and the positive evaluation results, provide encouragement that building mental health literacy in the rural workforce is a promising mental health promotion strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that black churches in the USA are best suited to curtail the rising incidence of suicide, and suicide ideation among African-American adolescents. Presently, little is known about the best preventive practices and mental healthcare interventions for the black adolescents assailed by suicide and suicidal ideation.

A review of the extant literature was conducted to understand and synthesize the current knowledge base about suicide rates among African-American adolescents. To retrieve and review relevant literature that focussed on suicide among African-American adolescents and the preventive roles of black churches the authors searched the following databases: PsychINFO, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Social Work abstracts, and Google Scholar.

Findings indicate that black churches could implement, and profusely replicate the lay health advisors and HAVEN models to successfully mitigate the rate of suicide among black adolescents. In addition it was found that the gatekeeper suicide prevention program model also holds promise for suicide prevention among black adolescents in black churches.

The result of this research synthesize is limited to African-American adolescents and may not be generalizable to other minority adolescents’ experiencing suicidal challenges. Furthermore, future research should utilize qualitative research methodologies to document lived experiences of African-American adolescents who are survivors of suicide attempts with a view to preventing suicide and suicidal ideation among black adolescents.

Healthcare professionals, and policy makers, are provided a panoramic view of culturally competent and spiritually sensitive prevention interventions within black churches that are most appropriate for reducing suicide rates among minority black adolescents.

Interprofessional collaboration is necessary when supporting mentally ill offenders but little is understood of these interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore prison officers’ perceptions of current and desirable levels of interprofessional collaboration (relational coordination (RC)) to understand how collaboration between these systems can be improved.

Gittell’s RC scale was administered to prison officers within the Norwegian prison system (n=160) using an adaptation of the instrument in which actual and desired levels of RC are evaluated. This differentiates between prison officers’ expectations of optimum levels of collaboration with other professional groups, dependent on the role function and codependence, vs actual levels of collaboration.

Prison officers reported different RC levels across professional groups, the lowest being with specialist mental health staff and prison doctors and highest with nurses, social workers and other prison officers. Significant differences between desired and actual RC levels suggest expertise of primary care staff is insufficient, as prison officers request much greater contact with mental health specialists when dealing with the mentally ill offender.

The paper contributes to limited literature on collaborative practice between prison and health care professionals. It questions the advisability of enforcing care pathways that promote the lowest level of effective care in the prison system and suggest ways in which mental health specialists might be better integrated into the prison system. It contributes to the continued debate on how mental health services should be integrated into the prison system, suggesting that the current import model used in Norway and other countries, may not be conducive to generating the close professional relationships required between mental health and prison staff.

The purpose of this paper, a meta-analysis and systematic review of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), is to focus on studies that reported trainees’ mental health literacy, attitudes and helping-related behaviors, as well as the impact of the program for the people who came into contact with trainees (i.e. recipients).

A systematic search included several online databases of published studies, dissertations or theses, and journals commonly publishing research in this area. Studies were randomized or non-randomized control trials using an intervention based upon the adult or youth MHFA curriculum.

Of the 8,257 initial articles, 16 met inclusion criteria. Small-to-moderate effect sizes (Hedges’ g=0.18–0.53) were found for the primary outcomes for the trainees with effects appearing to be maintained at follow-up. Study quality was inversely associated with effect size. No evidence of investigator allegiance was detected. Few studies examined the effects for those who received aid from a MHFA trainee. Preliminary quantitative evidence appeared lacking (Hedges’ g=−0.04 to 0.12); furthermore, a qualitative review found limited positive effects.

MHFA trainees appear to benefit from MHFA; however, objective behavioral changes are in need of greater emphasis. Additionally, considerably greater attention and effort in testing effects on distressed recipients is needed with future empirical investigations.

This is the first known review that includes preliminary findings on the effects of MHFA on the distressed recipients of the aid. It is anticipated that this will prompt further investigation into the impact of MHFA.

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether mental health status – either alone or in conjunction with race – affects perceptions of police legitimacy.

Using survey data collected from Portland, Oregon residents (n=259), this research examines predictors of trust in the police.

Results show that individuals with a history of mental illness are similar to African-American respondents: both are especially distrustful of the police. The combination of race and mental illness does not appear to create additional levels of distrust.

This research suggests there are important racial and mental health disparities in perceived police legitimacy, and that these disparities will need to be addressed for the police to successfully combat crime and encourage compliance with the law.

Although research has consistently highlighted how race affects perceptions of police legitimacy, research has not yet examined whether mental health status affects perceptions of police legitimacy; in addition to race, this paper highlights the unique perspectives of individuals with mental health concerns regarding policing.

Aging and mental illness both represent significant public health challenges for incarcerated people in the USA. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the vulnerabilities of incarcerated people because of the risks of infectious disease transmission in correctional facilities. Focusing on older adults with mental illness, this paper aims to examine efforts to decarcerate US correctional facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether these approaches may lead to sustainable reforms beyond the pandemic.

A narrative literature review was conducted using numerous online resources, including PubMed, Google Scholar and LexisNexis. Search terms used included “decarceration pandemic,” “COVID-19 decarceration,” “aging mental illness decarceration,” “jails prisons decarceration,” “early release COVID-19” and “correctional decarceration pandemic,” among others. Given the rapidly changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, this narrative literature review included content from not only scholarly articles and federal and state government publications but also relevant media articles and policy-related reports. The authors reviewed these sources collaboratively to synthesize a review of existing evidence and opinions on these topics and generate conclusions and policy recommendations moving forward.

To mitigate the risks of COVID-19, policymakers have pursued various decarceration strategies across the USA. Some efforts have focused on reducing inflow into correctional systems, including advising police to reduce numbers of arrests and limiting use of pretrial detention. Other policies have sought to increase outflow from correctional systems, such as facilitating early release of people convicted of nonviolent offenses or those nearing the end of their sentences. Given the well-known risks of COVID-19 among older individuals, age was commonly cited as a reason for diverting or expediting release of people from incarceration. In contrast, despite their vulnerability to complications from COVID-19, people with serious mental illness (SMI), particularly those with acute treatment needs, may have been less likely in some instances to be diverted or released early from incarceration.

Although much has been written about decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic, little attention has been paid to the relevance of these efforts for older adults with mental illness. This paper synthesizes existing proposals and evidence while drawing attention to the public health implications of aging and SMI in US correctional settings and explores opportunities for decarceration of older adults with SMI beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many people delay or never seek professional help for stress and depression. There is limited research on this topic using qualitative methodologies, but even less exploring the attitudes of the general population.This study explores the attitudes and preferences of the general population about when and where help is sought for stress and depression through the Somerset Health Panels. These comprised 12 two‐hour panels held across Somerset, England, involving a total of 96 people. This study reveals that a positive and non‐judgemental view of depression and stress exists within the general population. The response and support from friends and family is critical in seeking other sources of help, for which the GP is perceived as a gatekeeper. A preferred hierarchy of professional and nonprofessional sources of help exists, which is not entirely consistent with the arrangement of current services. This research adds to our understanding of how to engage with communities more generally and helps understand a general population perspective on mental health issues ‐ in particular, the way services are currently arranged does not always reflect the hierarchy in which people would prefer to seek help, and that stigma is evident but does not always act as a barrier to eventual help‐seeking.

The State of Washington’s Mental Health Division (MHD) is the State agency responsible for providing state sponsored mental health services. In 1993, the MHD received a Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) waiver to implement a statewide system of managed care for outpatient mental health rehabilitation services. Payments were to be prepaid and capitated and based on the numbers of clients in each of at least 3 payment tiers. This paper describes financial findings from a HCFA-mandated evaluation of the waiver. It looks at payment rates for children and adults, by tier, and for separately rated groups such as the categorically needy, medically needy, and disabled clients. Three types of State expenditures are compared in this paper: predicted expenditures based on actuarial projections, expenditures made on the basis of service utilization, and expenditures made after being adjusted for over payment controls. Expenditure predictions were consistently lower than actual expenditures, even after adjustments for over payment.

Evidence-based psychological therapies are available for severe and enduring mental health problems, but resources and access to these are limited within England. Practitioners in community mental health teams (CMHTs) can act as gatekeepers for access to psychological therapies for those in secondary care, but little is known about how they make referral decisions. This paper aims to understand how CMHT practitioners make decisions about who to refer or not, to secondary care psychological therapy services (PTS).

A total of 11 CMHT practitioners were interviewed to understand the decision making processes underpinning their referrals or otherwise, to a PTS within NHS England. The data were analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

Thematic analysis resulted in 11 sub-themes under three main themes of the self, the organisation and wider structure and the service user. Results indicated that some participants were referred automatically for psychological therapy if a service user asked or if there was external pressure to refer, while others’ decisions were informed by contextual information such as the service user’s ability to engage or change, risk status and limited organisational resources.

This study explores the decision making of multi-disciplinary professionals referring to PTS. The findings have important implications for understanding some of the factors that can influence patient access to psychological treatment in secondary care.

The purpose of this paper was to examine law enforcement officers' perspectives on job stress and barriers to supportive resources when working child sexual abuse cases in a large southern state. It is well documented in the literature that professionals who work in healthcare, emergency services and law enforcement face tremendous amounts of stress and consequences to their physical and mental health. Little research has been done to examine how child sexual abuse investigations impact law enforcement, and how these specialized officers perceive access to supportive resources.

This qualitative study was part of a larger quantitative study and included 20 law enforcement officers who participated in anonymous, semi-structured phone interviews.

Findings included (1) child sexual abuse cases are difficult, specialized and disturbing (2) barriers to supportive resources include law enforcement culture, the stigma of asking for help, awareness and accessibility of resources and leadership as gatekeeper to the resources and (3) officers perceive both formal and informal resources to be helpful and at best should be proactively available to all officers in the state. A model of the findings was developed to illustrate the implications for practitioners and scholars.

This study was not without weaknesses, specifically the small number of participants, volunteer sampling does not represent the general population and the sampling technique means some demographics may have been missed by researchers.

This study adds to the literature on law enforcement mental health, occupational health and mental health resources. It confirms established research in the literature and provides insight into officer perspectives about barriers that prevent access to informal and formal supports that could improve their emotional well-being.

This study is the first of its kind, to our knowledge, that asks detectives and investigators of child abuse cases about mental health resources. These law enforcement officers are at high-risk for traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout due to the specialized cases they investigate.