mental health

Finding strength from within: report on three local projects looking at mental health and recovery with people from some of the black and minority ethnic communities in Edinburgh

This exploratory community development project gathered the experiences around recovery of people using mental health services who come from some of the black and minority ethnic (BME) communities in Edinburgh. The project involved around 50 people from BME communities. The work with each of the three smaller projects was designed around the circumstances of that service and the ways in which those participants or service users wished to take part. This took place between December 2007 and May 2008.

A missed opportunity?: community sentences and the mental health treatment requirement

The Mental Health Treatment Requirement (MHTR) is one of 12 options (‘requirements’) available to sentencers when constructing a Community Order or a Suspended Sentence Order. The MHTR can be given to an offender with mental health problems who does not require immediate compulsory hospital admission under the Mental Health Act. If they give their consent, the MHTR requires them to receive mental health treatment for a specified period.

Cost-effectiveness and mental health

This report asks why cost-effective analysis is useful in the field, considers it in relation to other evaluations, and discusses depression treatment, intervention for child and adolescent mental health problems, hospital closure and helping decision makers connect with the evidence, ending with recommendations on stakeholder relevance, expanding the evidence base, expanding and adapting existing evidence, methodological challenges and improving linkages and exchange between research and policy-making.

Equality in later life: a national study of older people's mental health services

This study of older people's mental health services assessed available national data and visited specialist mental health trusts. The interview tool covered questions relation to several of the core standards used by the Healthcare Commission to assess trusts' performance. The key findings are reported in four main themes: age discrimination, the quality of inpatient care, the comprehensiveness of services; and working with other organisations (how specialist services worked with primary care, adult social services and acute hospitals).

Life in old age (Radio 4 series: The seven ages of humanity)

Four Radio 4 programmes in a series about the health and wellbeing of the seven ages of humanity. These four programmes explore life experiences and issues for people in their sixties and seventies.

The first programme looks at memory loss, the second discusses chronic conditions such as osteo-arthritis and the inability to hear, the third examines retirement, and the final programme looks at how medicine can fix some of the physical problems of old age.

Food, training and learning disability: a report on a food and health training project for support workers

This report focuses on the work of a small selection of people in Scotland to promote healthy eating among people with learning disabilities. The report will be of interest to those in the learning disability sector with a responsibility for, or interest in, food, health or training. It will also be of use to those who are involved in the delivery or promotion of the REHIS (Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland) Elementary Food and Health course, which this work was based on.