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The Mental Health Professionals Network (MHPN) was established to support and enhance collaborative care among health professionals working in primary mental healthcare. The MHPN has two primary arms: face-to-face network meetings and online webinars. The purpose of this paper is to investigate attitudinal and practice changes amongst health professionals after participation in MHPN’s network meetings.

In April 2016, an online survey was e-mailed to health professionals who had attended at least one network meeting during 2015. The survey asked about practice changes across seven key areas relating to increased awareness of and interaction with professionals from other disciplines. Interdisciplinary differences were investigated using the χ² statistic (p<0.05).

A total of 1,375 health professionals participated in the survey. For each of the seven practice changes investigated, between 74 and 92 per cent of respondents had made the change. Those who attended more network meetings were significantly more likely to have made changes. General practitioners were significantly more likely than other professionals to have made changes.

Attendance at MHPN network meetings has a positive impact on health professionals’ attitudes and practices towards a more collaborative approach to mental healthcare.

MHPN is a unique, national platform successfully delivering opportunities for interdisciplinary professional development in the primary mental health sector. The model is unique, cost-effective, practitioner driven and transferable to other settings.

While much research examines the consequences of deinstitutionalization for caregivers, few studies address support mobilization strategies used by patients themselves. We examine the relationship between mental health patients’ needs, their activation of network ties for health discussion, and network dynamics during the course of treatment. We hypothesize that patients strategically activate their network ties for support that matches their needs. Linking activation to network dynamics, we also propose that patients with greater needs exhaust their supportive relationships and experience more network turnover.

We draw on a dataset of new mental health patients (N=173) and their associated network members (N=4,144) observed over three years. Random-intercept regression models test the relationship between patients’ needs and (1) network tie activation for health discussion and (2) network turnover.

Although the overall level of need does not predict network tie activation, mental health patients are more likely to activate network ties who provide support that matches their expressed needs for discussion, emotional, and financial support (although not instrumental or informational support). In addition, patients with elevated needs experience increased network turnover. Strategic activation and its unintended consequence together suggest a revolving door of support for patients in crisis.

In the post-deinstitutionalization era, patients’ informal social safety nets must compensate for needs that are left unmet by deficits in the formal treatment system. We find that patients seek out network members who are well-equipped to help them cope with the onset of illness. At the same time, network activation may lead to instability as high-need patients churn through supportive relationships. Future research should examine the consequences of tie activation and support needs for network dynamics in different treatment contexts.

Public health mental health is an emerging field with significant potential for contributing to improved public health. However there is a notable gap in support for people working in this field and limited opportunities to influence the public health agenda at a strategic or policy level. This article describes how the London‐wide public health mental health network provides a regional forum for members to share information, develop measures, databases and protocols, and support professional development. It is hoped that other such regional networks will be established, as well as sector groups at local level.

The modernisation of mental health day services has been shaped by concerns about the social exclusion of people with enduring mental health problems. Initiatives have emphasised the use of mainstream facilities and an individualised approach. In contrast, service users have sought to safeguard opportunities for peer support in safe places. This participatory action research brought together service users, staff and others involved, to explore how these different views could be transformed into modernised services. The research took place in an outer London borough from 2003‐2007, using varied methods to explore social networking, including a visual method, action research groups and individual interviews. The research was designed and adapted to enable the involvement of people with different capacities and interests. Each stage generated findings for local modernisation, pointing to the importance of a safe space, service user knowledge of social and recreational activities and how self‐help groups develop and thrive. The final reconfiguration of local services reflected these research outcomes. Credible and useful outcomes can be achieved from collaborative research, allowing time and creating opportunities to shape interpretations of policy. Emerging initiatives are more likely to reflect service user perspectives and receive their support.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and experience of the Mental Health Professionals’ Network (MHPN) in building and supporting a national interdisciplinary professional development platform in community mental health to enhance practitioner response to the needs of consumers.

The key components of the MHPN model are described highlighting effective ways of engaging practitioners and supporting interdisciplinary practice. The MHPN has two key programs – Face-to-Face Interdisciplinary Practitioner Networks and an Online Professional Development Program.

The MHPN model has had significant uptake in communities across Australia and continues to grow. Practitioners report positive outcomes in engaging with other practitioners, improving their professional knowledge and having gained increased confidence in the provision of mental health care to patients.

The progress and learnings to date offer some useful insights that can be applied to other settings to support integrated care for patients with mental health problems through enhancing collaborative care among practitioners at the primary care level.

MHPN is a unique, national, successful platform delivering opportunities for interdisciplinary professional development in the primary mental health sector. The model is cost effective, practitioner driven, and transferable to other settings.

A range of one-to-one, group and online approaches to peer support are increasingly complementing formal mental health service delivery. Evidence is emerging of the potential benefits and challenges of peer support for individuals, communities and organisations. There is more limited evidence describing peer-led peer support networks. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In an evaluation of Prosper, a peer-led, peer support network and social movement, members of the network played a participatory role in the design, conduct and interpretative work of the evaluation. An online survey, one-to-one interviews and group discussions were used.

The evaluation describes an evolving network with planning and development meetings constituting core activity for many members alongside a monthly training programme supporting people to set up their own activities. There were strong shared values, and consensus that Prosper could strengthen social networks, improve individual well-being and impact on the way people used mental health services. Challenges were identified around feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability in relation to involvement in the network.

The participatory nature of the evaluation adds value to the learning offered. This was a descriptive evaluation; potential is indicated for the more formal modelling and testing of peer-led network and social movement initiatives.

Clarity is needed on the relationship of the network to statutory mental health services – specifically around taking on a “service provider” role – and on the advantages and challenges of a “hybrid” organisational model that combines traditional, hierarchical and new distributed forms of leadership and structure.

Prosper demonstrated potential to create a sense of common culture based on sharing lived experience and mutual peer support, providing an alternative to the traditional culture of mental health services.

This paper offers wider learning derived from evaluation of a highly original initiative in peer leadership, network structure and interface with statutory mental health services.

This paper reports the first phase of a research project on mental health policy in Scotland that investigates the way knowledge is mobilised in the policy process. In this first phase of the project, the authors' concern has been to map the organisational domain of mental health policy in Scotland, paying attention to the form and structure of agencies and organisations as well as to the relationships between them. The paper describes a set of organisations in which central government is dominant but notes also a range of organisational forms and functions, and a diversity of sources of knowledge, expertise and information on which they draw. A dense network of linkages between agencies is identified.

The COVID-19 epidemic has brought attention to the variables that influence the mental health of health workers who are entrusted with nursing individuals. Despite the fact that many articles have examined the effects of social media usage on mental health, there is a lack of research synthesizing learning from this body of research. The purpose of this study is to use text mining and citation-based bibliometric analysis to conduct a detailed review of extant literature on health workers’ mental health and social networking habits.

This study conducts a full-text analysis of 36 articles selected on health workers' mental health and social media using text-mining techniques in R programming and a bibliometric citation analysis of 183 papers from the Scopus database in VOS viewer software. But the limitations of the methods used in this study are that the bibliometric analysis was limited to the Scopus database because the VOS viewer program did not support any other database and the text-mining approach caused the natural processing redundancy.

The bibliometric analysis reveals the thematic networks that exist in the literature of health workers’ mental health and social networking. The findings from text mining identified ten topic models, which helped to find the related papers classified in ten different groups and are provided alongside a summary of the published research and a list of the primary authors with posterior probability through Latent Dirichlet Allocation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first hybrid review, combining text mining and bibliometric review, on health workers’ mental health where social networking plays a moderating role. This paper critically provides an overview of the impact of social networking on health workers' mental health, presents the most important and frequent topics, introduces the scientific visualization of articles published in the Scopus database and suggests further research avenues. These findings are important for academics, health practitioners and medical specialists interested in learning how to better support the mental health of health workers using social media.

Rates of self-harm are elevated in prison, and there is limited evidence to support the efficacy of brief risk screening at reception to predict and prevent self-harm. This study aims to examine the predictive validity of the self-harm/suicide screening items embedded in a prison mental health screening tool from two key domains strongly associated with risk: previous suicidal/self-harm behaviour, and recent ideation.

A sample of men and women were screened on entry to prison, with eight screening items covering the two key domains of risk. Follow-up data on self-harm incidents were collected for 12 months post-screening. The predictive validity of individual screening items, item combinations and cumulative screening score was examined for the overall sample and for men and women separately.

Individual screening items across the two domains were all strongly associated with self-harm in the follow-up period, with odds ratios varying from 2.34 to 9.24. The predictive validity of both individual items, item scores and item combinations demonstrated high specificity but low to moderate sensitivity, and modest area under the curves (AUCs). Predictive validity was generally better for men than women; however, differences were not statistically significant.

Identifying those at risk of self-harm in prisons remains challenging and brief universal screening at prison entry should be only one component of a broader prison risk assessment and management strategy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of very few to prospectively examine self-harm behaviour following risk screening. Predictive validity was examined in a representative sample of individuals in custody, and for men and women separately.

The Forensic Mental Health Services Managed Care Network is described, including the School of Forensic Mental Health. The purpose of this paper is to outline background, it details successes and challenges, focuses on links to clinical practice for Learning Disabilities (LD) service development, describes education and training, multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working and quality improvement. Findings from a small scale brief educational study undertaken in the high-secure service are included as an example of good practice.

Specific features relating to LD are highlighted. Comparisons are made with other managed clinical and managed care networks.

The Forensic Network has evolved over time. It has played a crucial role in shaping Scotland’s approach to Forensic Mental Health and LD. Central to its success is active involvement of key stakeholders, a multi-agency approach and collaborative working practice. Future plans include formal evaluation of impact.

This paper offers an interesting perspective from a forensic mental health managed care network; the existing literature is limited.