We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers with backgrounds in clinical practice, psychology and sociology, statistics, epidemiology, qualitative and participatory research methods, implementation science and patient safety. Working together, our aim is to produce research and new evidence that can have a positive influence on mental health policy and practice. The Centre name has changed to reflect our focus on mental health and describes the range of study types that we do within this area.
This breadth allows us to carry out qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies at any stage, from intervention development to use of routine clinical data to evaluate nationwide policies, service and public mental health innovations.
You’re right, there’s much greater understanding among the public – and health professionals – about the interconnections between mental and physical health as well as the importance of social and environmental factors for our health. We need more holistic approaches to healthcare that recognise this. We will continue to work with the King’s Health Partners Mind & Body team which is leading work in this area on studies such as IMPARTS aiming to improve the physical health of people with long-term mental health conditions, and the mental health of people with long-term physical conditions.
We involve patients, service users and carers in all projects in a range of roles, from steering committee membership to peer research. This increases the quality of all aspects of our research, from shaping the research questions to interpreting the results to consider the implications for practice and further research. In the process, we contribute to developing and disseminating methodologies for involving people with lived experiences in research. We also have carry out equity and participatory research where we co-produced research with people from diverse backgrounds and communities in south London, particularly people from disadvantaged groups who are often under-represented in research, to improve health and social care outcomes.
We work with local partner organisations to engage people who have not previously been involved with research. For example, the research associate for our Advance Statements for Black African and Caribbean people project contacted 29 community organisations and distributed flyers throughout the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation (SLaM)Trust to invite people to our focus groups and workshops and to recruit to our advisory group. Because this intervention is the only one shown to reduce Mental Health Act detentions, we focused this study entirely on the population who experience disproportionate rates of detention. Some of those who took part in this study will serve on the advisory groups for the evaluation of SLaM’s rollout of what are now called Advance Choice Documents, so that we continue the focus on equitable implementation.
One priority is implementation studies of interventions with a strong evidence base. The Advance Choice Document (ACD) Implementation project funded by the Maudsley Charity is one such study, which is being done ahead of the national introduction of ACDs through reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. Another example is Scaling-up Health Arts Programmes, a £2.6m research programme funded by the Wellcome Trust, which assess the effectiveness and implementation of three arts-in-health interventions.
A second priority is evaluation of interventions which have been implemented in the absence of a well-established evidence base. The Recovery Colleges Characterisation and Testing programme funded by NHIR is one example which will inform the future delivery and spread of recovery colleges – which support people to become experts in their own health and wellbeing through adult learning courses co-produced by topic experts and people with lived experience of mental health conditions – nationally and internationally. A third priority is building the evidence base to inform the delivery of new policies and practice. In this area, we are examining the impacts of air pollution and extreme heat on population mental health, health service and mental wellbeing in vulnerable urban populations, this work is funded by the Wellcome Trust and NIHR.
Involve policymakers at the early stages of your study and at the design stage. Identify the needs of policymakers, either those they have already flagged, or have yet to identify, but for which you can make a strong case; consider the implementability of interventions at an early stage; and be prepared for it to take many years before evidence is translated into policy and practice. Our team includes experts in implementation and evaluation methodologies who develop tools and resources to enable researchers to support rapid evaluation and implementation of polices and healthcare services.
Involve policymakers at the early stages of your study and at the design stage. Identify the needs of policymakers, either those they have already flagged, or have yet to identify, but for which you can make a strong case; consider the implementability of interventions at an early stage; and be prepared for it to take many years before evidence is translated into policy and practice.
Policymakers often look at other countries for ideas, so information to facilitate adaptation for other settings is important. One important type of information is around the control condition in evaluation studies. Another is about modifiable vs non-modifiable components of an intervention and enhancing an intervention’s adaptive capacity – that is its ability to respond to external problems that can only be resolved globally, such as climate change, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability.