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W3C-validated CSS 2.13.15 Involving people: Making sure IP is accessible to people with mental health problems
During the pilot phase, five sites focused specifically on mental health.
Learning from the pilots
- It is essential to consider the particular needs of your IP user target group.
There is a wide range of mental health conditions that are hugely variable in nature, symptom and treatment. The needs of the individual are likely to be hugely variable, as is the case with most user groups. There are a variety of services dedicated to mental health and activity reports from the pilots are equally varied. Care managers dealing with high volumes of relatively routine mental health problems reported taking between 10-15 minutes to identify information needs and issue IPs signposting people to suitable agencies. Staff dealing with people with more complex conditions could spend 1-2 hours on IP, though in some cases this included dispensing. It is important, therefore, to be clear about how to address the different needs of those with different conditions, through IP.
There may be additional factors to consider in how people with mental health problems will respond to information e.g. increased anxiety or fear about their condition or treatment, despondency, paranoia, perceptions of losing control, difficulties with memory or comprehension or denial that they have a condition. People need to be given the choice to receive information and need help to understand the purpose of information as well as the content.
- Recognise that some users with mental health issues find it difficult to relate to written information.
The pilots recognised that some people with mental health problems may find it difficult to relate to written information and sought to develop information that meets their needs. The survey findings showed a higher level of information being given verbally to users in mental health-related pilots. Sites found that there had been positive reactions from service users to verbal information, visual information, and, in some cases, video or web-based information.
Case study: Oxleas NHS Mental Health Trust
In Oxleas patients and carers have been central to IP development. The trust held focus groups with patients, carers and staff to appraise a range of possible pieces of information for inclusion in the directory. This enabled the trust both to test the applicability of information and to narrow down the number of critical information sources from a long list to a much shorter list. The trust plans to involve patients and carers again in the refreshing or development of any new sources of information, thus making the directory a ‘live’ resource that is evolving in accordance with the changing needs of those it exists to support.
On the next page: meeting the needs of people black and minority ethnic groups
