Identifying research priorities for older people’s mental health services
| Published date | 15 May 2019 |
| Pages | 89-100 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-02-2019-0004 |
| Date | 15 May 2019 |
| Author | Luke Emrich-Mills,Laura Louise Hammond,Emma Rivett,Tom Rhodes,Peter Richmond,Juniper West |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Social inclusion |
Identifying research priorities for older
people’s mental health services
Luke Emrich-Mills, Laura Louise Hammond, Emma Rivett, Tom Rhodes, Peter Richmond and
Juniper West
Abstract
Purpose –Including the views of service users, carers and clinical staff when prioritising health research can
ensure future projects are meaningful and relevant to key stakeholders. One National Health Service
Foundation Trust in England, UK undertook a project to identify the top 10 research priorities according to
people with experience using or working in services for dementia and older adult mental health. The paper
aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach –Service users with dementia and mental health difficul ties; informal
carers, family and friends of service users; clinical staff working in the Trust. Participants were surveyed for
research ideas. Ideas were processed into research questions and checked for evidence. Participants
were then asked to prioritise their personal top 10 from a long list of research questions. A shortlist of
26 topics was discussed in a co nsensus workshop with a sample of partici pants to decide on the final top
10 research priorities.
Findings –A total of 126 participants provided 418 research ideas, leading to 86 unique and unanswered
research questions. In total, 58 participants completed interim prioritisation, 11 of whom were invited to the
consensus workshop involving service users, carers and clinical staff. The final top 10 priorities were
dominated by topics surrounding care, psychosocial support and mental health in dementia.
Research limitations/implications –Future research from the Trust and collaborating organisations can
use these results to develop relevant projects and applications for funding.
Originality/value –This project has demonstrated the possibility of including key stakeholders in older adult
mental health research priority setting at the local level.
Keywords Mental health, Health care, Dementia, Aging, Research priority setting
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Designing clinical research relevant to the needs of people affected by health conditions is
important to ensure appropriate research outcomes and recommendations. Nowadays,
applications for research funding often require this relevance to be rigorously justified. Applicants
must demonstrate how they know their research will positively impact service users, carers, staff
or other relevant stakeholders. One strategy is to prioritise research uncertainties according to
these populations. This ensures the opinions of service users, carers and staff are not just
involved in research priority setting projects, but the whole process revolves around them.
This guarantees that the needs of stakeholders directly influence the direction of research, rather
than the research agenda being set exclusively by those undertaking or funding research. Future
research is, therefore, more likely to be engaging to service users, carers and clinical staff as it will
be more meaningful (Forsythe et al., 2017).
Setting research priorities may also uncover clinical research needs, and identify areas of
research important to the most people from the most perspectives and backgrounds. Many
organisations have undertaken research priority setting projects to identify these needs and
perspectives, covering a range of healthcare areas (see James Lind Alliance ( JLA) website for
This manuscript is in memory of
Kate Massey, who passed away
during the project. Kate, a
member of Inspire, provided
valuable contributions to the
design of the two surveys and
general consultation on other
aspects of the project. The
authors would also like to
acknowledge the help and support
of the staff at the Frank Curtis
Library in searching for literature,
Chloe Gathercole in helping
evaluate systematic reviews and all
NSFT staff that helped with survey
recruitment. The authors declare
no sources of external funding for
this project.
Luke Emrich-Mills,
Laura Louise Hammond,
Emma Rivett and Tom Rhodes
are both based at Research
Development Programme,
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS
Foundation Trust,
Norwich, UK.
Peter Richmond is based at
Inspire, Norfolk and Suffolk
NHS Foundation Trust,
Norwich, UK.
Juniper West is based at
Research Development
Programme, Norfolk and
Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust,
Norwich, UK.
DOI 10.1108/MHSI-02-2019-0004 VOL. 23 NO. 2 2019, pp. 89-100, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308
j
MENTALHEALTH AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
j
PAG E 89
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