Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has potential to disrupt and burden the mental health care system, and to magnify inequalities experienced by mental health service users. Methods We investigated staff reports regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in its early weeks on mental health care and mental health service users in the UK using a mixed methods online survey. Recruitment channels included professional associations and networks, charities, and social media. Quantitative findings were reported with descriptive statistics, and content analysis conducted for qualitative data. Results 2,180 staff from a range of sectors, professions, and specialties participated. Immediate infection control concerns were highly salient for inpatient staff, new ways of working for community staff. Multiple rapid adaptations and innovations in response to the crisis were described, especially remote working. This was cautiously welcomed but found successful in only some clinical situations. Staff had specific concerns about many groups of service users, including people whose conditions are exacerbated by pandemic anxieties and social disruptions; people experiencing loneliness, domestic abuse and family conflict; those unable to understand and follow social distancing requirements; and those who cannot engage with remote care. Conclusion This overview of staff concerns and experiences in the early COVID-19 pandemic suggests directions for further research and service development: we suggest that how to combine infection control and a therapeutic environment in hospital, and how to achieve effective and targeted tele-health implementation in the community, should be priorities. The limitations of our convenience sample must be noted.

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has many potential impacts on people with mental health conditions and on mental health care, including direct consequences of infection, effects of infection control measures and subsequent societal changes. We aimed to map early impacts of the pandemic on people with pre-existing mental health conditions and services they use, and to identify individual and service-level strategies adopted to manage these. Methods We searched for relevant material in the public domain published before 30 April 2020, including papers in scientific and professional journals, published first person accounts, media articles, and publications by governments, charities and professional associations. Search languages were English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. Relevant content was retrieved and summarised via a rapid qualitative framework synthesis approach. Results We found 872 eligible sources from 28 countries. Most documented observations and experiences rather than reporting research data. We found many reports of deteriorations in symptoms, and of impacts of loneliness and social isolation and of lack of access to services and resources, but sometimes also of resilience, effective self-management and peer support. Immediate service challenges related to controlling infection, especially in inpatient and residential settings, and establishing remote working, especially in the community. We summarise reports of swiftly implemented adaptations and innovations, but also of pressing ethical challenges and concerns for the future. Conclusion Our analysis captures the range of stakeholder perspectives and experiences publicly reported in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in several countries. We identify potential foci for service planning and research.

Moving into a long‐term care facility to live permanently is a significant life event for older people. Care facilities need to support older people to make a healthy transition following relocation. To help achieve this, we need to understand what facilitates and inhibits the transition process from the perspective of older people, their families, and care facility staff. Our review generated new knowledge to inform this understanding. We addressed the question: what factors facilitate and inhibit transition for older people who have relocated to a long‐term care facility? Five electronic databases, PsychINFO, British Nursing Index, CINAHL, MEDLINE and Web of Science were searched for the period January 1990 to October 2017. Grey literature searches were conducted using Google Scholar, and Social Science Research Network. Data were extracted for individual studies and a narrative synthesis was conducted informed by Meleis's Theory of Transition. Thirty‐four studies (25 qualitative, 7 quantitative and 2 mixed methods) met the inclusion criteria. Data synthesis identified that transition following relocation was examined using a variety of terms, timelines and study designs. Potential personal and community focused facilitators and inhibitors mapped to four themes: resilience of the older person, interpersonal connections and relationships, this is my new home, and the care facility as an organisation. These findings can inform the development of interventions for these target areas. They highlight also that further research is warranted to understand the organisational culture of long‐term care facilities, how this influences transition, and how it might be shaped to create and sustain a caring culture for older people.

The VERA framework has potential as a foundation level dementia communication training intervention, but it requires more rigorous testing. Nursing can lead the way in developing and embedding evidence-based, interdisciplinary dementia communication training in preregistration curricula.

The review highlights the wide-scale prevalence of mental illness stigma within the Greek culture and the need for further rigorous research including culturally tailored stigma interventions.

Loneliness has been found to relate to a wide range of harmful health outcomes. The adverse effects of loneliness upon people's lives emphasise the importance of understanding its nature and process. A number of theoretical and conceptual foundations have been proposed by scholars and are discussed and reflected upon in this article. The discussion and understanding of loneliness theoretical foundations provide useful insights toward the interpretation of its occurrence.

Boosting recruitment rates is crucial in helping to build new and less biased research evidence and for informing and underpinning all forms of evidence-based practice. The lessons learned from our pilot and the review of the literature highlight these issues and better enable investigators to access research settings that commonly possess many complex recruitment barriers and challenges.

Mental illness stigma negatively affects the lives of individuals with mental health disorders. Studies have indicated that the type and degree of stigma significantly varies across cultures. This study aimed to add to this body of knowledge by examining the prevalence and the type of mental illness stigma among individuals who identified themselves as Greek. It also examined the influence of a range of potential within-culture stigma moderating factors, including levels of previous experience with mental illness and mental illness knowledge. A cross-sectional quantitative design was employed, and 111 participants living in England and Greece were sampled through the snowball sampling technique. Stigma prevalence was measured using the 'Community Attitudes to Mental Illness' questionnaire. The findings revealed that participants showed a high degree of sympathy for people with mental illness but also considered them to be inferior and of a lower social class, and needing strict societal control. Higher stigma was significantly associated with being educated in England (instead of Greece), higher religiosity, lower knowledge levels and lower levels personal experience of mental illness. Targeted antistigma campaigns specifically tailored for the Greek culture are required in order to help reduce stigmatizing attitudes.