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Articles: Irene Cormac and Peter Tihanyi Meeting the mental and physical healthcare needs of carers Adv Psychiatr Treat 2006; 12: 162-172 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Meeting the mental and physical healthcare needs of carers: does it happen in practice?

Dr Pooja Tandon, Dr AJ Shishodia   (6 June 2006)

INVOLVEMENT OF TRAINEES IN CARER’S HEALTH

Manoj Rajagopal, Kandiah Sivakumar   (20 July 2006)

Assessing the mental health needs of carers

MANAR ELSAYED SHAHEEN   (2 August 2006)

Meeting the mental and physical healthcare needs of carers: does it happen in practice? 6 June 2006
Dr Pooja Tandon, SHO Psychiatry West London Mental Health Trust, Dr AJ Shishodia Send letter to journal: Re: Meeting the mental and physical healthcare needs of carers: does it happen in practice? drpooja_tandon{at}rediffmail.com Dr Pooja Tandon, et al.	Carers' assessments form part of the National Framework for Mental Health which requires that assessments are performed each year. In practice this standard is seldom met. In our experience there is a general lack of detection and assessment of mental and physical health in carers. Whilst they are stigmatized as caring for people with mental illness, carers also frequently have little say in treatment planing for the patient. This article does highlight the importance of detection and assessment of carers' needs, but we feel that there is a long way to go before mental health services and social services reach these worthy goals.
INVOLVEMENT OF TRAINEES IN CARER’S HEALTH 20 July 2006
Manoj Rajagopal, senior house officer Littlebrook Hospital,Dartford, Kandiah Sivakumar Send letter to journal: Re: INVOLVEMENT OF TRAINEES IN CARER’S HEALTH manojrajagopal{at}hotmail.com Manoj Rajagopal, et al.	We read with interest the article on meeting the mental and physical healthcare needs of carers by Irene Cormac and Peter Tihanyi (Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 2006, 12:162-172).This becomes increasingly relevant with the changing working pattern of inpatient and community teams especially from a trainee’s point of view. Also with the shift to non-residential oncall systems trainees are spending less time with carers compared to the older systems. We did a small study, regarding the involvement of carers in their patient’s care, on inpatients randomly chosen from all admissions lasting at least two weeks, to an acute psychiatric unit over a two month period. We compared these results with a set of standards which were structured after careful review of many guidelines including those from the care program approach (carers section), The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the National Standard Framework and the Carer’s Bill. We found that 66% of clients were not assessed for their capacity to give consent to contact their carers. Only 27% of carers were contacted within 7 days of the client’s admission. More involvement of carers were seen at admission but this decreased towards discharge. Only 7% of the carers were offered any support. This study suggests that in reality even with a multi-disciplinary team approach, carer’s needs are not addressed and from a trainee's perspective this is becoming an infrequent event due to many different types of constraints. We feel that trainees are losing much valuable experience with carers and that carers' needs are not fully taken care of. At least the importance of carers has been given adequate consideration in the current curriculum by involving carer issues in the membership examinations (eg: MRCPsych exam OSCE stations on explaining to the carer) but in practice from a trainee's point of view the involvement of carers is becoming rarer. Declaration of interest: None
Assessing the mental health needs of carers 2 August 2006
MANAR ELSAYED SHAHEEN, staff grade Send letter to journal: Re: Assessing the mental health needs of carers manarfarag{at}yahoo.co.uk MANAR ELSAYED SHAHEEN	Assessing the mental health of carers is one part of our duties as clinicians. We meet stressed relatives providing care who are quite frequently unaware that mental health services can help; for example they do not know about carer support workers. I would like to make two suggestions. The first is that an information leaflet adressing carers' needs and the help available might be useful.The leaflet would need to describe the impact of caring, and some of the addresses and web sites available as sources of information. Such leaflets could be available in out patient clinics ,day hospitals and GP surgeries. The second suggestion is to consider the possibilities of using rating scales, for example the clinical global impression scale, to assess carers. This would help in the identification of problems and monitoring of change in clinical status.