Education and Training Team, for their continued support throughout this pilot. A very special acknowledgment goes to our co-author, Dr David Bird who passed away suddenly in 2018. This is a salutary reminder that if during your career you are lucky enough to come across the rare work colleague, like David, who acts as a friendly mentor, supervisor, critic and motivator you have indeed been privileged.
Background: Supporting the education of children and young people with complex emotional mental health difficulties requires schools to have knowledge of their needs. Exchanging information about less visible mental health difficulties is, however, known to be complex. Exploring the perceptions of young people experiencing problems can explicate some of this complexity and identify solutions. Yet their views are rarely given credence in this context. Methods: The findings were derived from a broader qualitative study exploring the school experiences of young people, aged 14-16 years, identified by CAMHS as having severe emotional difficulties. Their parents' and teachers' perceptions were also explored. Data were collected via semistructured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Findings demonstrated that young people experiencing emotional difficulties need to feel safe about exchanging private information pertaining to their mental health. Teachers having a basic knowledge of mental health promoted their safety as this ensured confidentiality. Participants reported that CAMHS practitioners needed to be more proactive regarding the practicalities of exchanging information. Conclusions: Arguably, teachers need to have basic knowledge of mental health and schools need clearer mental health confidentiality guidance. CAMHS also have responsibility in identifying more information exchange mechanisms and young service users and parents can play a part in this.
Key Practitioner Message• CAMHS information exchange with schools must be strengthened to facilitate meeting the educational needs of children and young people with complex emotional difficulties.• For private mental health information to be safely, sensitively and confidentially exchanged, educational professionals benefit from mental health knowledge.• CAMHS has a central responsibility in supporting children and their parents to decide the 'key information' needing to be exchanged with their school.• The voice of the child with complex mental health difficulties must be considered when developing interagency communication protocol and policy.
Despite evidence identifying bullying as leading to severe distress, few studies have focused on bullied adolescents with existing mental health conditions. With increasing prevalence rates, it is necessary to understand how these adolescents can be better safeguarded. To address the issue, this study reports the rarely conveyed viewpoints of adolescents attending mental health services; clinically diagnosed with severe emotional conditions. To complement these perspectives, the viewpoints of their parents and teachers were also obtained. Thematic analysis identified school bullying as a serious stressor, contributing to and exacerbating their mental health need. They were prone to being trapped in a cycle of victimisation, complicated further by their preference for secrecy. Adolescents and their parents felt bullying problems could be appropriately managed if school staff were better tuned into the subtle signs of bullying, and managed disclosure more sensitively by working collaboratively with them and their assigned mental health practitioner. Recommendations were, a need for staff to better detect bullying distress and strengthen multi-agency links when bullying is suspected, to ensure quick, proactive intervention. Furthermore, schools could consider amalgamating the bullying and mental health whole school approaches, due to the intrinsic links between bullying and mental health.
Promoting concordance is an important aspect of the nurse prescribers role. It is estimated that over half of medications prescribed for chronic disease management are not taken properly or not taken at all. There are many different reasons why a patient may not take their prescribed medication correctly. This article will emphasise the need for nurse prescribers to think about patient motivation when addressing more complex concordance issues. It recommends that the nurse prescriber incorporates some fundamental motivation interviewing tools into their repertoire of skills, thus helping patients who are not concordant with their medication.
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