The Centre for Advancement of Interprofessional Education has scheduled a twitter chat on 24th August from 7-8pm (UK time).

The following questions will be posted during the twitter chat hour.

1.      What are your experiences of learning from patients, service users and carers in IPE?  What did you learn from them?

2.      How much power should service users have in IPE?

3.      What role, if any, do service users have to play in IPE post qualification?

4.      If…

How human givens differs from other therapy approaches

People often ask how the human givens (HG) approach differs from other therapeutic approaches. Indeed, we were asked by the Professional Standards Authority when the HGI register was being assessed for accreditation. This is what we told…

What are the 'human givens'?

We are all born with innate knowledge programmed into us from our genes.…

Following the CCrAMHP meeting in Lancaster on 11 August, we created a collection of links on nature and wellbeing.  Many of these relate to the local area but there are some more general links as well, so am posting the URL in case of interest. 

View the collection here.

Mind Our Minds aims to make sure UK citizens are provided with mental health services that give everyone that uses them a good quality service when they need them.

They have produced some 'patient opinions' which may be of use in informing learning and teaching, and would welcome feedback.  See here: …

The book takes as its starting point the crisis of healthcare in the UK: impossible health targets managed through command and control management and a stomach-churning rise in racism, whistleblowing and victimisation in the NHS. The use of nationally set productivity targets combined with austerity cuts have increasingly put clinical best-practice into direct conflict with funding. Health targets have become politically controlled, and performance has become a cynical exercise in ticking…

Published on 8 Oct 2014 'this film takes a controversial and contrarian view towards recovery from schizophrenia, proposing that the only treatment that can work is one where the so-called ‘patient’ is encouraged and empowered to become an equal partner in the process of healing'. Directed by Aparna Sanyal.

VIEW THE FILM

A useful teaching resource?  Respond in comments below if you have used it.

This book weaves together service users' lived experiences of mental health recovery and ideas about how creative activities such as art, music, and creative reading and writing can promote it, particularly within social and community settings.

Find out more.

Ordinarily well: the case for antidepressants

In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients' dilemmas with an…

Threshold concepts are ideas or ways of looking at things that enable a deep grasp of something in the world; the phrase ‘threshold’ signifies the crossing that a learner is enable to make between superficial knowledge and a deeper and irreversible understanding. The Threshold concepts introductory tool is for anyone wishing to understand and apply a cluster of ideas around threshold concepts and the learning that occurs when students encounter troublesome ideas that transform their…

'This report was informed by the Student Living project, a pilot project between Student Minds, University Partnership Programme (UPP) and Nottingham Trent University in 2016, funded thanks to the UPP Foundation, as well as a review of existing literature and interviews with a range of sector experts.This report includes:

• Recommendations for accommodation providers and university staff

• Suggested ways of working to promote positive student mental health.

• Discussion…

The first time I was admitted to a psychiatric unit my preconceptions were challenged. It was not scary, or at least not most of the time. It was, however, boring, something I hadn't really expected, and above all, it was odd. Experiences that staff and more seasoned patients took for granted were to me surprising, even bizarre, catching my attention and making me a participant observer of my own care. Here I have curated several objects representing the closed environment of the ward.…

This Local Government Association report explores how councils influence the mental wellbeing of our communities and how council services, from social care to parks to open spaces to education to housing, help to make up the fabric of mental health support for the people in our communities.

Read the Report

Report produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing Inquiry

Key messages (courtesy of Clive Parkinson's blog)

1. The arts, imagination and creativity can help keep us well, aid our recovery and support longer lives better lived. 

2. Prescribing arts to deliver health saves money.

3. There is great potential for the arts to do more to help meet major challenges facing health and social care:…

An NDTi guide to auditing and improving mental health services so that they are effective in supporting people with autism and people with learning disabilities.

The Green Light Toolkit is a set of free to access resources including:

• A recently updated audit framework and toolkit, and easy read version
• A database of examples of reasonable adjustments made by services,…

Interestinbg article in this months Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy Journal on using a strengths based approach with new students to help them adjust to the transition and deal with all the insecurities that it brings. Some quite positive effects and seems to meet their initial needs.

I developed an on line package attempting to "normalise" the doubts new students have, it received some positive reviews but not visited as much as I thought it would…

Crazy…or wise? The traditional wisdom of indigenous cultures often contradicts modern views about a mental health crisis. Is it a ‘calling’ to grow or just a ‘broken brain’? The documentary CRAZYWISE explores what can be learned from people around the world who have turned their psychological crisis into a positive transformative experience. …

Are there close links, in your institution, between people involvement in teaching/learning about mental distress on the one hand, and student support services on the other?  

Do you think such connections are important and, if so, why?

I've recently been involved in a number of discussions about this question and would really value any thoughts.  Please use the comments box or contact me.  Many thanks. 

VIEW THE…

In January 2017 the Chief Social Worker for Adults in collaboration with the Social Care Institute for Excellence hosted a roundtable event at SCIE to explore what strengths-based social work with adults, individuals, families and communities really means for practitioners and people using services. 

This report from the workshop extends the call to action around strengths-based social work practice and captures the key points and comments from the group discussions with summaries of…