In recent weeks I’ve published a number of pieces from social workers talking about their own mental health and the support (or lack of it) they’ve received from employers after coming forward for support. If you are feeling mentally unwell it’s important to get professional help (if you need help identifying options a useful resource [...]
Blair McPherson looks at how the inclusion of ‘hoarding behaviour’ as a mental illness in a new psychiatric manual could impact social work practice. In his hospital bed he looked like a frail old man. The fall had shaken his confidence. He had lain there all night on the floor until the meals on wheels [...]
Last night I appeared on Radio 4′s All in the Mind show to discuss my recent investigation into the number of mental health patients sent out-of-area to private hospitals amid a shortage of psychiatric intensive care unit beds. You can listen to my interview here (it starts about the 14 minute mark). The main points [...]
This article by a social worker about the impact the increasing pressures placed on her team had on her mental health has provoked quite a response from frontline staff and social care managers. Writing about your own mental health can be an incredibly scary thing. Yet, I always find it amazing – and comforting – [...]
A major study published earlier this year found that Community Treatment Orders are failing to do what policymakers hoped they would – well, at least when it comes to cutting down hospital readmissions for so-called ‘revolving door’ mental health patients. But how are CTOs helping or hindering the people subject to them? Mental health service [...]
“It was ever thus surely?” – that was one response I received after tweeting a link last night to an article I’d published on NHS bed closures leading to more out-of-area mental health placements. I take the point. Yes, out-of-area placements have long been used when NHS beds are under pressure. But I also feel that [...]
One reason commonly cited as contributing to social work’s ongoing struggle to assert itself in the medically-dominated world of mental health is the fact that the profession doesn’t have the same research history or evidence-base as that of the medical profession. So I thought I’d flag up a new research centre that’s looking to change [...]
The Care Quality Commission and Ofsted have published a really interesting joint review of how adult and children’s social services (and related agencies) handle the impact that parental substance misuse or mental health issues can have on children. I’ve published a main news piece on a series of shortfalls in joint working between children’s and [...]
The High Court is to consider whether the statutory duties placed on Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) under the Mental Health Act extend to a responsibility for the suitability of hospitals that people they detain are placed in. The scope of AMHP duties formed a key part of the case of DD v Durham Council [...]
Under pressure social workers, NHS agencies and police need investment to improve the response for patients who are detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act, argues Steve Chamberlain, chair of The College of Social Work’s Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) network. Police in Merseyside have told inspectors that they “frequently” have to wait up to eight hours [...]
Mad World highlights the latest research, policy and debate about all things mental health along with some social work stuff and the odd piece of random nonsense, just to keep you on your toes.
It is written by community editor Andy McNicoll.
Email: Andy McNicoll
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