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A blog by Elvira Perez Vallejos, Associate Professor of Digital Mental Health, Mental Health and Technology theme. I recently attended a workshop at the Royal College of Psychiatrists to discuss and reflect on the impact of digital technology on the future of mental healthcare. This workshop was part of the Topol review which is aiming at preparing the NHS healthcare workforce to embrace current and future digital developments for mental healthcare.

Interview and commentary from Mercè Santos Mir. Every year #MentalHealthAwareness day steps into the limelight for its annual day of recognition, but has  it ever truly left? Mental health awareness is increasingly becoming a daily conversation between friends, family, colleagues and health service providers across the country and abroad – breaking down a little piece of the taboo topic each and every time we discuss anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and all the other conditions that fall under the mental health umbrella. We caught up with our Exhibitions Curator at the Institute of Mental Health , Mercè Santos Mir, who has worked closely with artists who deal with issues of mental health within their practice, who put theirs and others' inner-experiences on canvas for all to see, to raise awareness and break down the barriers we face in the introverted dark of battling against a mental health condition.

Commentary written by professor Peter Bartlett Sec State (Justice) v MM; Welsh Ministers v PJ, [2017] EWCA Civ 194 This was the conjoined appeal of two cases, concerning ostensibly similar programmes regarding release from hospital of people with mental health problems who require continued care in the community. MM concerned conditional discharge under section 73.[1]  This mechanism affects people detained through the criminal provisions of the MHA (‘Part III patients’) who are subject to a ‘restriction order’ (s 41) – that is, they can only be released by the Secretary of State or, as in this case, a review tribunal.  A conditional discharge may be made when the tribunal considers that the criteria for ongoing psychiatric detention are no longer met, but where it considers that appropriate that should remain liable to be recalled for further treatment.  As the name suggests, the order allows conditions to be placed on discharge – typically determining where the individual will live, that he or she will comply with prescribed treatment, what medical supervision he or she will receive, that he or she will refrain from use of alcohol or drugs, and sometimes that he or she will not meet with former associates, or not go into particular geographic areas (eg., not near the home of a former victim, or not to go near schools, if the index offences involved children).

Integrating Care: Finding Commonality Between Organisations to Implement Best Practise Neil Chadborn, Zvezdan Bozinovski Photography. Neil Chadborn’s research focuses on inter-professional and inter-organisational aspects of integrated care for older people. He is currently involved in the PEACH project, to understand how a Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC) can help organise healthcare services in care homes – and has an Alzheimer’s Society Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, exploring how services within a community can work together and with people living with dementia. We talked to him about the challenges of providing truly integrated care and why networks may provide a more inclusive way to enable people to access support according to their needs.

Someone close to me asked me which psychiatric tablet that I take helps me the best. I thought for a few seconds and then replied that actually it wasn’t a pill that helped me the best, but a ‘thing’ - validation. They replied quite honestly that they didn’t know what validation was. So I told them........... I have blogged before about my journey

The 6th IMH Research Day was held on 22nd May 2018. The event highlighted the work of the Institute’s doctoral candidates, Managed Innovation Networks (MINs), and all early-career researchers (including research assistants, research fellows, and research-active clinicians). Topics included Dementia care, Autism, ADHD, ASD, student and workplace men

Venue: A floor seminar rooms, Institute of Mental Health, Triumph Road, Nottingham NG7 2TU Date: Tuesday 22 May 2018, 9.00am – 5.10pm Plenary Speaker: Professor Anne Rogers Title of talk: ‘Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose’ ?: reflections on past and future research in mental health Dear All, The IMH would like to invite you to attend the 6th

The purpose of this exhibition was to share my art work and inspire others to try art as a means of helping them through difficult times by finding ways to express their emotions and be in the “here and now”.People have expressly stated how inspired they have been by the art and staff at IMH have stopped and thanked me stating that the light and li

On Friday 17th November 2017, Professor Birgit Völlm hosted a forensic psychiatry research seminar “Interventions for Sex Offenders post-SOTP” at the Institute of Mental Health. The seminar was organised by the charity Crime in Mind and chaired by Professor Pamela Taylor. Professor John Gunn introduced the aims and objectives of Crime in Mind outli

It is practically 12 months ago since I last wrote a blog entitled relapse. I spoke about how I was afraid that it would happen; “A lot of the time, the monster is small and I’m hardly aware it’s there. I can get on with my life, with no worries or dark thoughts, the monster stays quiet. At work, I can be extremely productive, full of ideas and pos

Dear readers, contributors and casual blog browsers, As we come to the end of another fantastic year for the blog I would like to thank you for all your support. The blog has received some fantastic content throughout 2017 and as always it's been great to have so many people sharing their experiences, research, views and opinions. Have a brilliant

In February 2017, a group of academics, researchers and “Lived experience” volunteers came together to explore the character, dynamic and outcomes of recovery colleges. The volunteers came from Leicester, London and Brighton, and were made up of people who had experienced mental health illness and attended a college, a carer of a person using the c

It sounds much too simple doesn’t it?  Making small talk could save a life.  But the truth is, it really could.  Today SHRG is supporting the campaign launched by the Samaritans. They are asking us all to be courageous and strike up a conversation with someone if we are worried about them at a railway station. MAKE SMALL TALK AND YOU COULD SAVE A L

Funded by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), the Nottingham People’s Choir was formed in 2013 as an initiative to promote mental health. It is not a condition of Choir membership that people have used mental health services, yet recruitment of members takes place within a local NHS mental health trust. The group, located in Nottingham, is facili

The hula-hoop, the shimmy and the fiddle10 October was World Mental Health Day and on Saturday 14 October Carnival MAD enlivened the IMH as part of a Nottingham-wide programme of events: see http://www.mhaw.org.uk/The inimitable Julie Gosling chaired the day and many brave people took to the stage to demonstrate their personal strategies for wellbe

A really insightful piece from Trevor Clower. Trevor organises the Carers Road Shows every year. You can follow his posts and activities through his blog.

To listen to doctors and nurses describe their everyday experience, is to realize how visceral, how raw, the interaction between them and their patients really is. We dress our doctors in white coats, our nurses in colour-coded uniforms, and dress our health policy in jargon but essentially the business of ‘healing’ is a series of ancient rituals,

When people consider dementia research, they often think of trials of drugs to treat or slow the disease. However, understanding and combating the many and varied negative effects of dementia requires more than just drug trials. In my research at the Centre for Dementia at the University of Nottingham’s Institute of Mental Health, we’re looking at

  Narratives of recovery from mental illness: The role of peer supportMike Watts and Agnes HigginsRoutledge (2017)ISBN: 978-1-13-884799-6158 pages It’s not often that I come across a book that has resonated with me on such a profound scale but this is one of them. Narratives of recovery from mental illness: The role of peer support is part of

So far this year the blog has had over 5,850 views from 69 countries and we have you to thank! We would also like to thank our wonderful contributors who have allowed us to cover diverse topics such as prejudice in mental health, mental health & disclosure, social care since the mental health act,  brain stimulation,  academic/creative writing,