Blogs by Vanessa Pinfold

Words That Carry On: Lindsay’s Fund
by Vanessa Pinfold

 

On Saturday afternoon (24/3/2018) I went by bus across London to the memorial service of an amazing person I had never met, but wish I had. Lindsay Riddoch, who died on the eve of her 25^th Birthday – late December 2017 – when she ended her life and her battle with mental health issues.

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Psychosis and the Mortality Gap
by Vanessa Pinfold

Did you know that people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar or psychosis have a life expectancy lower than twenty years compared to the general population? This is a shocking statistic and more needs to be done to support the physical health needs of this group of people.

Mental Health Policy & Strategy

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Can we turn more scientific discoveries into practical health benefits for everyone?
by Vanessa Pinfold

A framework for mental health research was released by the Department of Health on 7^th December 2017. It sets out a vision for how, over the next 10 years, we can progress understanding of prevention, care and treatment through investment in mental health research.

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A framework for mental health research – what next?
by Vanessa Pinfold

We have been involved over the past 18 months in the development of a 10 year strategy for mental health research in the UK. Developing such a strategy was one of the recommendations in the 2016 Five Year Forward View for Mental Health report. 

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INVOLVE at 21
by John Gibson | Thomas Kabir | Vanessa Pinfold

Last week we attended a public involvement conference organised by INVOLVE.  INVOLVE was originally set up by the Department of Health in 1996. It remains one of the oldest Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) organisations in the world. We had a stand promoting our own work championing expertise from experience in mental health research.

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Friends in Europe: A mental health conference with a difference
by Vanessa Pinfold

A warm welcome awaited me when I arrived at the European Network for Mental Health Service Evaluation (more commonly referred to as ENMESH) recently. ENMESH develops and maintains a network of active researchers in mental health service research in Europe. I met service users and carers, junior researchers, professors and international policy experts.

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Another step forward – Research into wellbeing networks
by Vanessa Pinfold

The places we go, the things we like to do and the people we know all play an important contribution to our wellbeing. Yet, this is not a key focus of current clinical mental health interventions. We are hoping our research will change this.

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What do we mean by patient and public involvement in research?
by Vanessa Pinfold

Our charity is on a mission to improve the mental health of communities everywhere – through research. We obviously can’t do this alone, and thus collaborate with many others who share our goals. In the last three years, since we established our staffed research unit, we have seen some progress with the value and role of research being given greater prominence.

Public Involvement

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Sad but inspiring: In memory of Donald Campbell 
by Vanessa Pinfold

Monday morning and I was on my way to work catching up with the news and social media. I had missed an excellent piece in the Sunday Times by Alistair Campbell about his brother Donald who died recently aged 62. Luckily it is available as a blog. Reading, I was immediately absorbed. That’s the power of the personal narrative. I also felt very, very sad. Another person dying far too early after years of treatment for schizophrenia.

Inclusion and combating stigma

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Taking a challenge – cycling for research into suicide
by Vanessa Pinfold

On Sunday 31^st July I got up very early – 4.45am – and cycled to the train station to start my Ride London-Surrey Prudential challenge. Getting to the start line was quite an effort as I live in West London and it started in Stratford over to the east.

Fundraising

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Implementing an online mental health toolkit for relatives– reflections from our first data day!
by Vanessa Pinfold

There is an increased focus and interest in how to implement innovations into health care settings. And there should be! Call it improvement science or knowledge transfer or implementation – this area of work is how information developed through research studies or service improvement programmes can be used to achieve practical change.

Improving mental health support

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Improving the quality of participant information sheets
by Vanessa Pinfold

Researchers at Kings College London have just produced an interesting paper, published Feb 2016.  It is available online, and can be easily accessed. It looks at the ease of reading participant information sheets over a 10 year period – June 2003 to October 2013.

Research methods

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Is collecting participant support preferences in interviews with vulnerable people helpful?
by Vanessa Pinfold

Recently, we decided to take an audit across three separate projects to see how participants responded to our questions about their preferences for support. We decided to present what they told us as an infographic. We would love for you to tell us what you think of this approach – do you think that asking participants for their support preferences as part of the research recruitment process is helpful?  Do you have any concerns ? Let us know your thoughts.  

Research methods

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#RCTDebate – what did we learn?
by Vanessa Pinfold

Our first ever public event was held on 8^th October 2015 at the Jerwood Space. This was a chance to bring people with different expertise together to consider the role of the RCT (Randomised Control Trial) in mental health research design. It was also the launch of our Talking Point series of papers – a group of papers written by survivor / service user researchers on under discussed topics. Our launched paper by Alison Faulkner has a title that speaks for itself: “RCTs: the straitjacket of mental health research?

Research methods

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Mental health research priorities for Europe
by Vanessa Pinfold

There seems to be a lot of conversations at the moment about priorities for mental health research. What should funders fund to improve the lives of individuals and communities with regard to mental health? Where are the promising breakthroughs? How can we gain parity for mental health research funding alongside other health areas?

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Research into practice – reflections from a primary care event
by Vanessa Pinfold

Today we attended a learning and development event for primary care practitioners - GPs, practice nurses, information specialists in London. The opening session particularly addressed local practitioners about current changes in mental health - both local and national agendas including how funding is allocated and services join up. With the new mental health task force working away to create a 5 year forward view of the future it will be interesting to see how issues raised in local meetings can find their way to the task force because crucial concerns are being raised particularly about collaborative provision of solutions for people with mental health problems. How to remove the barriers between teams or system elements so that better care is provided? Can research help with some answers? I hope so. The importance of research linked to practice was mentioned several times.    

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Understanding psychosis and schizophrenia – new report from the British Psychology Society
by Vanessa Pinfold

The end of November saw the launch of a new report by the, British Psychology Society (BPS) with the aim of challenging stereotypes of schizophrenia and psychosis. This is 14 years on from the publication of the first edition “Recent Advances in Understanding Mental Illness and Psychotic Experiences” which was a really useful overview emphasising the contribution of a psychological perspective to making sense of ‘serious mental illness’.

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World Innovation Summit on Health (WISH)
by Vanessa Pinfold

Last week I attended WISH as a guest of Lord Ara Darzi along with around 800 international delegates representing health fields across the globe. The Institute for Global Health Innovation at Imperial college London has posted some highlights online and Richard Horton provided a comment piece in the Lancet this week.

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