This is a summary of chapter 18 - the future of psychiatric services in the NHS. It was written by Professor Peter Tyrer, Professor of Community Psychiatry, Imperial College, London in the Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health Medicine.
In this chapter he considers how mental health services have been regarded as a 'Cinderella service' scrabbling for resources; yet mental illness incurs a heavy burden on populations and it is very unwise to ignore this burden.
In this chapter he considers how mental health services have been regarded as a 'Cinderella service' scrabbling for resources; yet mental illness incurs a heavy burden on populations and it is very unwise to ignore this burden.
He discusses the attempts to integrate mental health and social services, yet warns of the remaining yawning gap. He suggests that these systems should integrate and work together to allocate patients to appropriate care.
He warns that although there are increasing services for care in the community there is still a long way to go. Currently there are too few outlets for patients to be discharged from hospital into community settings, meaning they remain in hospital. This has the knock on net effect of there being a shortage of acute psychiatric beds.
The chapter adds a plea ‘please, oh please, do not introduce changes in policy until they have been shown to be evidence-based’.
The chapter adds a plea ‘please, oh please, do not introduce changes in policy until they have been shown to be evidence-based’.
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1 comment:
The 19th chapter on Mental Health is missing - Freudian slip?
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