Publications by authors named "Gillard S"

Background: The Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Intervention provides self-managed web-based access to mental health recovery narratives (n = 659). We evaluated effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in improving quality of life for adults resident in England with mental health problems and recent psychosis experience.

Methods: Prospectively registered pragmatic parallel-group randomised trial controlling for usual care, recruiting from statutory mental health services and through community engagement activities, with a 52-week primary endpoint (ISRCTN11152837).

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Background: Peer workers are people with personal experience of mental distress, employed within mental health services to support others with similar experiences. Research has identified a range of factors that might facilitate or hinder the introduction of new peer worker roles into mental health services. While there is mixed evidence for the effectiveness of peer worker delivered interventions, there are no studies exploring how implementation might be associated with effect.

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Article Synopsis
  • Evidence shows whirlin has different roles in neurons, but its impact on behavior and function hasn't been fully explored.
  • A mutation in the whirlin gene, identified through a genetic screening, leads to hearing issues and increased hyperactivity in mice.
  • The study demonstrates that whirlin is crucial for both hearing and activity-related behaviors, indicating broader roles for this protein in brain function.
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Aims: High-quality evidence is lacking for the impact on healthcare utilisation of short-stay alternatives to psychiatric inpatient services for people experiencing acute and/or complex mental health crises (known in England as psychiatric decision units [PDUs]). We assessed the extent to which changes in psychiatric hospital and emergency department (ED) activity were explained by implementation of PDUs in England using a quasi-experimental approach.

Methods: We conducted an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis of weekly aggregated data pre- and post-PDU implementation in one rural and two urban sites using segmented regression, adjusting for temporal and seasonal trends.

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Introduction: Informal carers of people with mental health problems often have unmet support needs. Mental health recovery narratives are increasingly accessible, but their relevance to and effect on informal carers have been minimally investigated. The Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Intervention is a first-in-field intervention that provides informal carers with access to a diverse collection of recorded mental health recovery narratives.

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Narratives describing first-hand experiences of recovery from mental health problems are widely available. Emerging evidence suggests that engaging with mental health recovery narratives can benefit people experiencing mental health problems, but no randomized controlled trial has been conducted as yet. We developed the Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Intervention, a web application providing self-guided and recommender systems access to a collection of recorded mental health recovery narratives (n=659).

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Background: People experiencing mental health crises in the community often present to emergency departments and are admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Because of the demands on emergency department and inpatient care, psychiatric decision units have emerged to provide a more suitable environment for assessment and signposting to appropriate care.

Objectives: The study aimed to ascertain the structure and activities of psychiatric decision units in England and to provide an evidence base for their effectiveness, costs and benefits, and optimal configuration.

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Introduction: Written reports are often the sole form of communication from diagnostic imaging. Reports are increasingly being accessed by patients through electronic records. Experiencing medical terminology can be confusing and lead to miscommunication, a decrease in involvement and increased anxiety for patients.

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The aim of this systematic review was to assess the magnitude of the association between types of intimate partner violence (IPV) and mental health outcomes and shed light on the large variation in IPV prevalence rates between low- to middle-income countries and high-income countries. The study is a systematic review and meta-analysis. The following databases were searched for this study: Cochrane, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and the Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts.

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Background: A range of evidence for the effectiveness of one-to-one peer support in mental health services is emerging. Levels of engagement with peer support vary with limited studies showing few individual participant characteristics predicting engagement. Implementation factors that might predict engagement have not been considered.

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Background: Internationally, hospital-based short-stay crisis units have been introduced to provide a safe space for stabilisation and further assessment for those in psychiatric crisis. The units typically aim to reduce inpatient admissions and psychiatric presentations to emergency departments.

Aims: To assess changes to service use following a service user's first visit to a unit, characterise the population accessing these units and examine equality of access to the units.

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Background: Psychological therapy assessments are a key point at which a person is accepted into a service or referred on. There is evidence of service users experiencing harm, dropping out of services and potentially experiencing poor outcomes because of inadequate assessment practices. Approaches to assessment tend to be developed by individual services, with a lack of research identifying what makes a good assessment.

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Background: Successive governments have placed service users' experiences at the heart of mental health services delivery and development. However, little is known about service users' experiences of assessments and there is some evidence that assessments can cause harm.

Aims: To synthesise the qualitative literature on service users' experiences of undergoing mental health service assessments.

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Background: Internationally, an increasing proportion of emergency department visits are mental health related. Concurrently, psychiatric wards are often occupied above capacity. Healthcare providers have introduced short-stay, hospital-based crisis units offering a therapeutic space for stabilisation, assessment and appropriate referral.

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Background: Peer workers are increasingly employed in mental health services to use their own experiences of mental distress in supporting others with similar experiences. While evidence is emerging of the benefits of peer support for people using services, the impact on peer workers is less clear. There is a lack of research that takes a longitudinal approach to exploring impact on both employment outcomes for peer workers, and their experiences of working in the peer worker role.

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Objective: Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is the second-most prevalent chromosomal disorder in men, though late diagnosis is very common and 50-75% of men remain undiagnosed. Evidence suggests that men with KS have impaired quality of life (QoL) but research on how the diagnosis of KS is associated with different QoL domains and what factors influence patients' QoL is limited. This study aimed to provide a systematic review of the published evidence on factors that influence QoL in men with KS.

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Background: Psychoeducation delivered face-to-face is effective in alleviating mental health morbidities in family carers of individuals with psychosis. However, research in such interventions delivered online is scarce. We evaluated the effectiveness of a digital multicomponent intervention-COPe-support-in improving carers' mental wellbeing and caregiving-related outcomes.

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Purpose: We sought to understand how the experiences of people in the UK with pre-existing mental health conditions had developed during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: In September-October 2020, we interviewed adults with mental health conditions pre-dating the pandemic, whom we had previously interviewed 3 months earlier. Participants had been recruited through online advertising and voluntary sector community organisations.

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Background: Web-based mental health interventions offer a novel, accessible, and self-paced approach to care delivery to family carers (ie, relatives and close friends who support a loved one with psychosis). We coproduced COPe-support (Carers fOr People with Psychosis e-support), a psychoeducational intervention delivered via an enriched web-based learning environment with network support from professionals and peers. In addition to the rigorous investigation of the effectiveness of COPe-support on the well-being of carers and mental health outcomes, it is imperative to understand the experiences of using the web-based intervention by carers and its associated web-based implementation and facilitation strategies.

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Background: High numbers of patients discharged from psychiatric hospital care are readmitted within a year. Peer support for discharge has been suggested as an approach to reducing readmission post-discharge. Implementation has been called for in policy, however, evidence of effectiveness from large rigorous trials is missing.

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Objectives: Peer support is rapidly being introduced into mental health services internationally, yet peer support interventions are often poorly described, limiting the usefulness of research in informing policy and practice. This paper reports the development of a peer support intervention that aims to improve outcomes of discharge from inpatient to community mental health care. People with experiential knowledge of using mental health services-peer workers and service user researchers-were involved in all stages of developing the intervention: generating intervention components; producing the intervention handbook; piloting the intervention.

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