Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

Mental Health Service User Movement

We have produced a policy paper on The Mental Health Service User Movement in England, which you can download below.

It includes the results of a survey of local user groups and looks to the challenges and opportunities ahead. It calls for extra support for user groups and for the development of a more coherent national voice for mental health service users.

Download the Mental Health Service User Movement Policy Paper (102 KB)

20 years of the User Movement (2005)

Here is a chapter about the history and development of the User Movement, taken from Beyond the Water Towers our review of developments in mental health services over the past 20 years.

Download service user movement chapter (71 KB)

Involving Service Users

Services often ask the question "Why won't our users get involved?" A better question might be "Why on earth would our users want to get involved?"

There is a debate within the user movement about whether this involvement can ever achieve significant change, or whether users will always be co-opted into the service of a disempowering and inhumane system.

Service users can indeed make a real impact on services, but for them to do so requires services to accept and respond to far more radical challenges than any they have experienced to date.

The article below explores the differing views about user involvement and includes guidelines for good practice.

Download Introduction to User Involvement (2001) (63 KB)

Research Priorities

There is very little work that sets out the research priorities for developing patient and carer focused services. We carried out a project to fill that gap. The priorities we identified included:

• GPs & primary care
• Prevention & mental health promotion
• Social inclusion & the role of mental health & social care services
• Services for people in crisis
• Person-centred care planning
• User & carer involvement in service planning & delivery
• Supporting & empowering family members & carers
• Care pathways & transitions between services
• Mental health in the criminal justice system
• Service user involvement
• Carer-centred care, carer involvement and support
• Marginalised groups

You can read the full reports and an overview below.

Download Literature Review Report (184 KB)

Download Consultation Report (336 KB)

Download Overview Report (100 KB)

Or see the Literature Review and the Consultation results on the SDO website.

For more information about this project, contact: Chiara Samele.

Smoking Cessation

The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health is collaborating with QUIT, the national stop smoking charity, on a project that aims to provide proactive and tailor made counselling for smokers with mental health problems to help them reduce the amount they smoke or stop smoking altogether.

The project is funded by Cancer Research UK and commenced in spring 2007.

Health care professionals and other relevant community based personnel in the Strategic Health Authority Regions have received training to offer stop smoking interventions and appropriate referrals for smokers with mental health problems. Existing QUIT telephone counsellors have received training in mental health awareness. They offer help in parallel to local interventions via a specialist telephone or email support service. Visit the QUIT website (www.quit.org.uk) and click on Health Professionals to see more detailed information about the project.

For more information on any of these projects, contact Linda Seymour, Head of Policy.