Editorial
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17556228200900025 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| Date | 11 December 2009 |
| Published date | 11 December 2009 |
| Author | Ian Baguley |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
2The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice Volume 4 Issue 4 December 2009 © Pier Professional Ltd
Editorial
Changing existing practices in mental health services has
been a key part of the policy agenda for the past 10 years,
and this edition of The Journal of Mental Health Training,
education and Practice reflects some of the work that has
been undertaken to support these changes.
Although there is much to celebrate about the changes
that have been made over the past 10 years, there are also
many changes still to be made (see Thurstine Bassett’s
and Barbara Evans’ paper in this edition). New Horizons
(Department of Health, 2009a) ‘aims to build on these
foundations by setting out the next stage in the government’s
strategy for improving mental health in England. It will take a
cross-government approach and looks to the wider health service,
local authorities, employers, education and criminal justice
agencies to play their part in achieving its aims’. However, a
recent paper by Appleby and Butterworth (2009) describes
some of the major challenges that remain. The authors
identify that despite the developments in mental health
services, over 5,000 people a year still kill themselves; one
in four people will suffer from some form of mental illness
at some point in their lives; one person in 100 will suffer
from a serious mental illness; one in 10 mothers will suffer
from postnatal depression and 1.3 million older people
suffer from depression or another form of mental illness.
For the six million people who have depression and/or
anxiety problems, the recent drive to increase access to
psychological therapies has done little to improve access to
the services that they need.
While much is being done to change general adult
mental health services, one area that does need a focus
in the future is dementia care. A report by Professor Sube
Bannerjee, commissioned by the Department of Health,
suggests that the prescribing of antipsychotic medication
to help services deal with patients who are confused,
aggressive or difficult to manage remains outside all good
practice guidelines and that access to helpful forms of
psychological therapy is severely restricted (Department of
Health, 2009b). There is a need for those who work in older
people’s services and dementia care services to have access
to good quality education and training programmes and be
properly supported in their efforts to implement change.
This will provide a major challenge to those who
commission education and training, many of the providers
of services for older people and those with dementia come
from the third sector. Providing open access to education
and training programmes, funded by the NHS, to those
outside the NHS is a challenge that commissioners will
need to face – some areas addressed this problem some time
ago and some will find that they can no longer avoid it.
In this edition o f The Journal of Mental H ealth
Training, Education and Practice, John Allcock and Nicki
Hollingsworth describe the process of introducing two
new roles into the mental health workforce – support,
time and recover y (STR) worker s and community
development workers (CDW) for black and minority
ethnic communities. The authors describe the challenges
involved in introducing new roles into the NHS and how
some of these were met. What becomes apparent in this
paper is the strength of the policy that underpins new
roles, the inherent difficulties in the move towards local
determination and shifting the balance of power. The
work described in this paper could be seen as a metaphor
for managing change within an organisation as big as the
NHS – no matter how well thought out the policy is –
‘local determination’ and ‘shifting the balance of power’
have an almost endless capacity to confound!
Wendy Osborn and Genevieve Smyth provide a brief
commentary on the challenges of the work of the allied
health profession al New Ways of Working nat ional
programme and working with six different professional
groups to agree a clear strategy.
Margaret Conlon reviews the role of the primary
mental health workers in child and adolescent services
in Scotland. This role, also being used in England, is
important, particularly in the early identification of
mental health problems in children and adolescents, as
well as implementing early interventions.
Stephen Abbott and colleagues describe the results of
a study that examines the values of medical and nursing
students regarding their relationships with patients who
Government, 2007). Although the study highlighted the
Ian Baguley
Professor of Mental Health and Director, Centre for Clinical and Academic Workforce Innovation (CCAWI),
University of Lincoln
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