The Global Mental Health Assessment Tool (GMHAT) pilot evaluation: Final report

Public Health England, April 2019
The Global Mental Health Assessment Tool (GMHAT is a computerised clinical assessment tool developed to rapidly assess and identify mental health problems in a range of settings. The tool was tested with 200 Syrian refugees aged 18+ years in one clinic in Beirut, Lebanon who were being processed for resettlement to the UK as part of the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme.
This report summarises the evaluation findings on how this tool worked in practice at identifying immediate mental health needs requiring urgent attention prior to departure and in facilitating diagnoses, referrals and treatment once in the UK.
Click here to view the report.

Mental health services: addressing the care deficit

NHS Providers, March 2019
This report looks at the levels of demand reported by frontline leaders across the range of services they provide, and examines what lies behind the growing pressures.  In particular the report identifies widespread concerns about benefits cuts and the impact of universal credit. It also suggests that loneliness, homelessness and financial hardship are adding to pressures on NHS mental health services.
Click here to view the full report.

Mental Health and the Armed Forces, Part Two: The Provision of Care

House of Commons Defence Committee, February 2019
This report calls on the government to establish a “world-class centre for the treatment of mental injuries” suffered by Service personnel the next 12-18 months, so that veterans and their families receive the provision and support promised in the Armed Forces Covenant.
Click here to view the full report.

Mental Wellbeing Commission report

NHS Staff and Learners’ Mental Wellbeing Commission, February 2019
This report sets out the findings of the NHS Staff and Learners’ Mental Wellbeing Commission.  The Commission aimed to discover and review evidence of good practice where the mental health and wellbeing of staff and learners in NHS organisations has been made an organisational priority. The Commission has examined successful interventions from around the country, to identify what has worked well and what could be adopted widely.
Click here to view the full report.

Health matters: reducing health inequalities in mental illness

Public Health England, January 2019
This edition of Health matters brings together in one place the most informative data and the best evidence of what works in removing health inequalities experienced by people living with mental illness. It focuses on some of the actions that local areas can take to reduce these health inequalities, so that people with mental illness can achieve the same health outcomes and life expectancy as the rest of the population.
Click here to view the full report.

Filling the chasm: Reimagining primary mental health care

Centre for Mental Health, December 2018
Report from the Centre for Mental Health exploring a number of local initiatives which are bridging the gap between primary care and secondary care services, supporting people who fall into this ‘grey area’ due to having more complex needs, not meeting secondary care thresholds, or presenting with multiple or medically unexplained symptoms.  It looks at

  • Identifying the opportunities for prevention and promotion of mental health
  • Maximising social interventions for mental health
  • Culture change – embracing the holistic approach
  • Empowering the person – moving ‘from patient to person’
  • Bridging the gap between primary and secondary care

Click here to view the full report.

Modernising the Mental Health Act: Increasing choice, reducing compulsion: Final report of the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983

Department of Health and Social Care, December 2018
The final report sets out recommendations covering 4 principles that the review believes should underpin the reformed Act:

  • choice and autonomy – ensuring service users’ views and choices are respected
  • least restriction – ensuring the Act’s powers are used in the least restrictive way
  • therapeutic benefit – ensuring patients are supported to get better, so they can be discharged from the Act
  • people as individuals – ensuring patients are viewed and treated as rounded individuals

The review looked at:

  • rising rates of detention under the Act
  • the disproportionate number of people from black and minority ethnic groups detained under the Act
  • processes that are out of step with a modern mental health care system

Click here to view the report.

Community Mental Health Survey 2018

Care Quality Commission, December 2018
Research on the experiences of people receiving community mental health services. It finds that people’s experiences of the care they receive from community-based mental health services have continued to deteriorate. Key concerns are expressed around:

  • access to care,
  • care planning
  • mental health conditions in relation to physical health needs
  • financial advice
  • advice on benefits.

Click here to view the full report.