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The changing clinical landscape in psychiatry, both before and after the pandemic, has impacted students’ direct contact with psychiatric patients. It is imperative, therefore, that medical education keeps pace with evolving clinical pathways to ensure that clinicians are always appropriately trained not just for common presentations but also for low-prevalence, high-risk situations. Simulated-based training is well established. However, it is not without its limitations, many of which could be overcome with the use of virtual simulation. This study aims to analyse the use of virtual simulation within medical education to train clinicians in psychiatric assessments.

A scoping review was undertaken with a comprehensive literature search of the six most relevant online peer-reviewed databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane. All published papers in English that discussed simulation in teaching psychiatric assessments were included.

Virtual patients can be used for educational, diagnostic and therapy purposes attributable to advances in speech-recognition technology. Virtual simulations are well received and positively affect clinicians’ knowledge and skill development. Educational faculties should consider using virtual simulation technologies to improve learning outcomes. Further studies should enhance the fidelity and quality of virtual assessment simulation situations, mainly focusing on the virtual patient’s empathy, gesturing and body language to enable this evidence-based tool to be used effectively and efficiently for the benefit of future patient care.

The changing clinical landscape in psychiatry, both before and after the pandemic, has impacted students’ direct contact with psychiatric patients. This scoping review has reviewed the use of virtual simulation-based education to train clinicians for psychiatric assessments. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work has not been conducted before.

A foundational tenet of psychiatric nursing is person-centered care. Research suggests person-centered care requires a therapeutic relationship based on partnerships; this partnership is integral to service users’ recovery. The purpose of this paper is to describe the integration of the concept map within a tidal/recovery framework. The integration may assist psychiatric nursing students to effectively apply recovery principles to their individual nursing practices.

This paper outlines the Tidal Model (TM) of Recovery and Reclamation philosophy, concept maps, and how these elements integrate into the psychiatric nursing practice education. Second-year psychiatric nursing students were asked to use the TM with concept mapping while working with service users in practice education settings.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual model that the authors, psychiatric nursing educators, designed to help psychiatric students integrate the recovery principles with the service user’s care plan. Future directions include devising a research study to examine the effectiveness of the TM concept map. The authors did not conduct a research study.

Applying recovery principles improved person-centered care and enhanced the collaboration between service users and nursing students, and prepared students to practice from a collaborative perspective.

Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) is a serious condition that can result in death if it is not recognized and treated appropriately. A high fidelity simulation scenario on AWS was created for psychiatric nurses in an educational setting that focused on the recognition of alcohol withdrawal, implementation of the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment (CIWA) and initiation of appropriate treatment and management of AWS.

A formative assessment teaching strategy was used to evaluate the development and implementation of a high fidelity simulation (HFS) on alcohol withdrawal syndrome. The HFS was part of a baccalaureate undergraduate psychiatric nursing education designed to reinforce classroom theory and clinical application. Results were measured using a self‐report survey completed by students that focused on the details of content and performance.

Feedback from the 38 nursing students who evaluated the HFS was overall positive. Survey results showed that the HFS scenario reinforced the classroom theory on addiction and mental disorders while translating and supporting student's learning to clinical practice. The HFS provided opportunity for students to practice skills when they had not had this experience during the clinical rotation. Only four students felt uncomfortable with decision making and initiating the CIWA scale after the HFS.

There is a gap in the development and use of standardized simulations for mental health and substance abuse scenarios as a teaching strategy in nursing programs. The results of this study supported using HFS as an educational strategy and set the stage for future complex simulations such as dual diagnosis and clients with comorbidities.

This paper aims to describe the development of a distance learning resource for mental health professionals.

The author gives a brief history of the development of educational video, in particular with reference to mental health. The paper highlights the critical milestones, including the ability to publish video‐rich material on the internet.

The paper describes the development of a successful, innovative web site, Mental Health Television, and the problems encountered along the way. Discussion includes the implications for professional education, and the usefulness in continuing professional development. It also discusses the value of educational videos for patients, relatives and friends.

Many people use the internet as their first and often last stop to inform their opinion. This resource offers professionally produced, video based information in the mental health field. The opportunity to influence on the international stage is significant.

Mental Health Television was the first resource to offer on‐line educational videos in this field. This paper describes the process and the lessons that can more generally be applied and will be of interest to those concerned with mental health education, both in the public sphere and for students and continuing professional education. There are implications for anybody considering distance learning in other medical specialties and all academic disciplines.

Mental health literacy programmes can help reduce stigma towards people who experience mental health challenges. Co-facilitated mental health literacy programmes, delivered by a person with lived experience of mental health challenges in partnership with a person with clinical experience in mental health services, may further reduce stigma. This qualitative study aims to explore participants’ satisfaction with a co-facilitated mental health literacy programme and facilitator characteristics influencing satisfaction.

The authors used deidentified post-workshop evaluation data from 762 community mental health literacy programme participants (86% response rate). Thematic analysis of qualitative data used a general inductive approach.

Findings indicate high satisfaction with the co-facilitation model used to deliver a mental health literacy programme. Three key themes related to co-facilitation satisfaction: how participants perceived the co-facilitation model overall; the impact of having two facilitators that offered different knowledge and perspectives about mental health challenges; and the impact of personal stories shared. The personal stories shared by facilitators were perceived as bringing the workshop content to life and providing insights into people’s experiences and well-being journey. Key themes influencing co-facilitation satisfaction related to facilitator knowledge, skills, values and attitudes.

Findings indicate the positive impact of incorporating people’s lived experience into the design and delivery of mental health literacy programmes. Findings highlight key facilitator characteristics and support needs when recruiting facilitators to deliver programmes. This includes good facilitation skills alongside personal experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first large study examining satisfaction with a co-facilitated mental health literacy programme for the general public.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mental health service users’ experiences of involvement in a clinical psychology course.

Five participants were recruited from a service user and carer group aligned to a university professional clinical psychology course. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and data were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Four superordinate themes, group processes, advocating, transforming and power, were drawn from the data, with ten subthemes emerging capturing experiences on the personal, professional and group levels.

The study is not generalisable and has a small number of participants. However, many of the themes have resonance with existing literature.

Service user initiatives need to consider the personal and contextual issues that service users may have experienced prior to their involvement. The needs of service user initiatives may change over time. Such initiatives must evolve in conjunction with the personal and political journeys of participants.

Few studies have explored the experiences of mental health service users in clinical psychology training using a robust methodology. The current study suggests that eliciting these experiences highlights factors that facilitate involvement as well as the barriers.

The last two decades have seen an increase in service user involvement (SUI) in the training of Mental Health Professionals (MHP). There is developing empirical support for SUI in MHP training, however, there is no published research into SUI in the training of Cognitive Behavioural Therapists. The purpose of this paper is to explore cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) trainees’ experience of SUI in their training. The study focuses on how an individual service user (SU) led training session is experienced and how this differs to routine CBT training.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six participants. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Data revealed three superordinate themes: first, predisposing influences on learning; second, factors associated with emotional processing of experience; and third, impact upon learning outcomes. The results suggest that participants’ appraisal of their learning from SUI maybe influenced by how they accommodate the emotional impact of the experience.

The paper makes recommendations for educators on courses involving service users (SUs), acknowledges the study’s methodological limitations and suggests areas for future research.

To develop and implement an educational programme to improve medical students’ attitudes towards intellectual disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to improve the healthcare outcomes for individuals with intellectual disability.

The development of an educational programme involving actors with an intellectual disability as simulated patients. Scenarios were developed involving basic healthcare interactions. The programme was piloted in three sessions with 45 students. A qualitative analysis of student feedback was then used to develop a student attitude questionnaire for completion pre- and post-educational intervention.

The student attitude questionnaire was completed by 23 different medical students. Two domains were analysed: affect and understanding domain scores, mean difference (95% CI) 3.17(2.41-3.94) p<0.001, knowledge and skills domain scores, mean difference (95% CI) 4.22(3.3-5.14) p<0.001.

Student feedback reveals significant positive changes in affect and understanding, and an improvement in knowledge and skill levels when interacting with people with an intellectual disability following the educational intervention. Some major institutions now offer comprehensive programmes involving people with intellectual disabilities as tutors, and in the role of simulated patients. However, more needs to be done to encourage the increased participation and good practice for all of tomorrow’s doctors to benefit.

Following the publication of recent enquiries into the deaths of people with intellectual disabilities. We know that many of these deaths are premature and potentially preventable. The main failing identified repeatedly is that healthcare staff lack of awareness of the needs of people with intellectual disabilities. This emanates from poor quality and limited curricula time dedicated to intellectual disabilities. There is a need to drastically change the approach to teaching about intellectual disabilities to medical students. All the evidence promotes the involvement of people with intellectual disabilities and their careers in designing and delivering this teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to review the impact of a new, brief forensic rotation for general psychiatry residents on the variety of residents’ forensic exposures.

The authors surveyed residents who trained before and after the implementation of the new rotation to assess the impact of the rotation on the residents’ forensic experiences during training across a variety of domains.

Even in a highly clinical forensic setting, residents participating in the required rotation reported significantly greater variety of forensic experiences than those who had not completed the required rotation, including types of settings and assessments, Rotation completers reported greater exposure to various types of settings and assessments, and courtroom-related experiences, as well as the overall number of forensic exposures. The two groups did not differ in their forensic exposures in general psychiatry settings, civil-forensic evaluations or diverse forensic populations. Secondary analyses showed that increased exposure to court-based experiences and multiple forensic settings was associated with forensic fellowship interest.

This study demonstrates that a brief, mandatory forensic clinical rotation may increase residents’ exposure to forensic settings, assessments and courtroom-related experiences and that increased exposure to courtroom-based experiences in particular may increase interest in forensic fellowship. While not surprising, the results demonstrate that residents were not otherwise having these forensic experiences and that even time-limited forensic rotations can enhance the breadth of residents’ forensic exposures. Further, the rotation achieved these outcomes without using typical forensic sites but instead highly clinical sites, which may be particularly encouraging to residency programs without ready access to classic forensic rotation sites. This study contributes to the small but expanding body of the literature describing the value of increasing psychiatry residents’ training in clinical forensic psychiatry.

Forensic psychiatric treatment is aimed at reducing violence risk factors (Bonta and Andrews, 2017) and achieving positive, prosocial life goals (Willis et al., 2013). Drama education can be provided as part of this treatment, but the evidence base is scarce. Therefore, the present study aims to provide insight into experiences with drama education as part of forensic psychiatric treatment.

A qualitative study was conducted, based on participant observation and 16 interviews, to explore the experiences of patients and treatment providers with drama education during forensic psychiatric treatment. Analyses were conducted following the consensual qualitative research method (Hill et al., 1997).

The five central themes that emerged from the analysis were knowledge, happiness, excellence in play, community and staff-patient hierarchy. Participants reported that they enjoyed the drama lessons, appreciated the group atmosphere and were able to practice their social-emotional skills. Furthermore, patients and their treatment providers became better acquainted with each other because the power differences between patients and staff decreased during the drama lessons.

Drama education can be considered a useful part of clinical forensic psychiatric treatment, given the positive experience of participants and its perceived positive impact on treatment.

This was one of the first studies to examine the influence that drama education may have on forensic psychiatric treatment. Four of the five themes were in line with the good lives model (Willis et al., 2013), indicating that drama education fulfiled basic human needs or “primary goods” that are important to address in forensic psychiatric treatment, as it decreases the need to compensate these goods with criminal behaviour.