The Three NIHR Schools’ Mental Health Programme has announced their upcoming seminar series, running from January 2025 to March 2025. These seminars are the perfect chance to learn about a range of topics related to mental health, including gaps in care, meaningful involvement, and access to mental health services.
Making a Difference Through Your Research: Getting Started on Research Impact as an Early Career Researcher.
Monday 12 January 2025 (12 to 1pm) – Ruth Naughton-Doe
Are you wondering how to begin the long journey of translating your research findings into meaningful, measurable impact? Ruth Naughton-Doe will share her story from her NIHR Three Schools Mental Health Programme Fellowship which explored solutions to perinatal loneliness. Ruth will reflect on how she built a research network, obtained funding for spin-off projects implementing the findings of her research, and is beginning to track and measure the changes that are happening in practice and research.
Care gaps among people presenting to the hospital following self-harm
Thursday 30 January 2025 (12 – 1pm) – Sarah Steeg
Sarah will present findings from her research into care gaps among people who have harmed themselves. Understanding the care and support people receive after they have sought help for self-harm is vital. Appropriate and timely care can help prevent further self-harm and is key for suicide prevention. Most research to date has focussed on the role of mental health services, including outpatient care, psychological therapies, crisis home treatment teams and inpatient mental health services. However, general practitioners (GPs), voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) services and social services can play a key role in providing self-harm aftercare.
During this seminar, Sarah will discuss the types of services individuals accessed after self-harming and identify specific groups that may be experiencing gaps in care. She will also address the importance of co-developing measures of patients’ needs in collaboration with clinicians and individuals with lived experience of self-harm.
Living well with severe mental ill-health: learning from implementing physical health support in different regional contexts
Wednesday 12 February 2025 (2 – 3pm) – Emily Oliver, Ilaria Pina, Philippa Shaw, Zuneera Khurshid and Dan Steward
Enhancing physical health support for people living with severe mental ill-health is key to addressing the health inequalities experienced by this group. The seminar will bring together learning from different implementation approaches across the UK, sharing practical and scalable solutions on how to transform and reallocate resources within healthcare systems. This will lead to the promotion of conversations around care to better serve those living with severe mental ill-health to live healthy, longer and fulfilling lives.
Beyond Tokenism: Meaningful Participation in Healthcare Innovation
Thursday 20 February 2025 (11 – 12pm) – David Hunt
Involving individuals with lived experience and relevant staff in research and improvement initiatives is fundamental for improving health-related experiences and outcomes. When done well, this approach ensures those core individuals in healthcare shape the development of research and improvement projects, aligning interventions with their needs and priorities to create sustainable change that is meaningful and implementable. However, some projects risk tokenism, where these groups are invited to contribute without clear guidance on their roles or when they should input, resulting in their insights being insufficiently incorporated into future developments. In this talk, David will explore how to avoid these pitfalls by addressing the challenges of meaningful engagement. An example will be provided to demonstrate how meaningful participation can be achieved, with a focus on ensuring transparency in how insights are translated into tangible improvements.
Examining Access to Mental Health Services for Social Work-Experienced Young People
Thursday 20 March 2025 (12 – 1pm) – Taliah Drayak; Julia Mannes and Robbie Duschinsky
Many children and young people with social work involvement experience mental health difficulties. Yet, little is known about factors affecting their access to Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This session will present quantitative and qualitative findings from the “CAMHS Referrals and Outcomes for Adolescents and Children with Social Workers” (COACHES) study. It will cover:
- Potential inequalities exposed by the data
- Strengths and limitations of using administrative data
- Involvement of experts-by-experience, practitioners and policymakers throughout the study.