Probiotics for mental health

Professor Colin Martin
has co-authored:

Probiotics in Mental Health 

From the website:
The concept that the gut and brain are intricately linked is widely accepted not just within the lay community but increasingly within scientific and therapeutic circles as well. Terms such as "heartache" and "gut wrenching" are more than mere metaphor, they represent key fundamental aspects of human experience which all individuals will invariably endure from time to time. The relationship between the gut and brain is complex but fundamental to health and wellbeing. Increasing and compelling evidence supports the existence of a relationship between the health and status of the gut and the manifestation of significant psychopathology.

Meeting the Physical Health Needs of Mental Health Service Users

Associate Dean Dr Jacquie White has co-authored:

White, J. O’Brien, S. Beadle, M. Ackroyd, A. (2018) Meeting the Physical Health Needs of Mental Health Service Users Ch.3 In Wright, K. & McKeown, M. Eds. Essentials of Mental Health Nursing Sage Publications Ltd. London. Pp. 493-506.

Jacquie White (centre) meets with her co-authors
to celebrate the launch of the book

Nurse-Facilitated Health Checks for Persons With Severe Mental Illness

Associate Dean Dr Jacquie White has co-authored:

White, J. Lucas, J. Swift, L. Barton, G.R. Johnson, H. Irvine, L. Abotsie, G. Jones, M. Gray, R.J. (2018) Nurse-Facilitated Health Checks for Persons With Severe Mental Illness: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial Psychiatric Services

Professional issues in maternal mental health scale (PIMMHS)

Professor Dean Julie Jomeen has co-authored:

Jomeen J, Jarrett P, Martin CR (2018) : The development and initial validation of a brief and valid measure European Journal of Midwifery doi: 10.18332/ejm/83276

Embracing mental health and physical health care

Jacquie White has co-authored a chapter in: 

Hardy S and White J. (2017) Embracing mental health and physical health care In Clifton A, Hemingway S, Felton A and Stacey G (eds) Fundamentals of Mental Health Nursing: An Essential Guide for Nursing and Healthcare Students Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Mental Health Workshop

Kirsty Fishburn writes:  on Monday 24^th April 2017, we had an inaugural Mental health Research Workshop, Chaired by Dr Kim Dent-Brown. The intention of the workshop was to bring like minded professionals together who wanted to meet, network and share research ideas. The key note speech was by our own Dean Prof Julie Jomeen, who set the scene with where current mental health research is and how we can have an impact on this. We had a guest speaker Dr Puvan Tharmanathan, RDS Adviser -Yorkshire and the Humber who talked to us about The NIHR Research Design Service – how it can help you.

We had delegates from across our Faculty of Health Sciences, the wider university academic’s and PhD students. We also had a great representation from our partners within the research community, from organisations such as the Humber Trust.

We all spoke about what had got us in the room and our journey to the present mental health research wants and needs... one of the main reasons for the workshop was to attempt to get tangible publish produced research out there from some of us in this workshop. We set up in groups to discuss our area of research and what we would like to put further efforts into for publication, or grant find.

Some of these topics that we wanted to further explore were:

• Early interventions
• Child and Adolescents Mental health Services
• Bridging the gap between adolescents and adult services.
• Substance misuse and dual diagnosis
• Personality Disorder
• Service Provisions
• Perinatal services evolvement

These were just to name a few....   

The workshop closed with plans to have follow up meetings to keep the momentum of energy the workshop had inspired going, to promote networking and an exchange of contact details. Then as inaugural delegates to speak to our peers for the next meeting, to keep this growing and gaining the recognition it needs and deserves.

If you would like to know more, please do not hesitate to contact myself or Dr Kim Dent-Brown who is undertaking a ‘secretary’ type role for the group.

Access to mental health services for young people in hull and East Riding

Conference just beginning with local MP Alan Johnson in attendance seen here with colleagues from the Department of Psychological Health and Wellbeing

World Mental Health Day

Today, the Mental Health Foundation, the UK's leading mental health research charity, aims to raise public awareness of important issues on World Mental Health Day.
The Day, which is recognised by the World Health Organisation, champions good mental health, for everyone.
Like the Foundation, the University is focused on rigorous research and practical based study, pioneering change, in pursuit of equality for those suffering from mental health issues, and advanced knowledge.  
Like the Foundation, we aren't afraid to challenge the status quo or tackle difficult or under researched issues. Here is just a sample of the research we are undertaking in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, working towards better outcomes for patients, their families and society as a whole:
• Access to mental health services: Exploring the barriers and facilitators to helping distressed young people in Hull and the East Riding. The aim of the study is to explore mental health support for young people in the Hull and East Riding area, looking at what support is available, young people’s attitudes to accessing this support, and how various services interact in providing that support.
We hope to identify factors that encourage or discourage young people from accessing support, and make recommendations that will increase positive help-seeking behaviour in this group.
The results of the study will be used to make recommendations to improve services for distressed young people in Hull and the East Riding. There will be a one-day conference to at the end of the project where we will share our findings. This event is open to the public and will be held at the University of Hull on 5 December 2016. For more information contact Dr Jo Bell or visit this link.
• The identification of physical illness in people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which is contributing to a poorer quality of life and significantly reducing life expectancy. International work by Dr Jacquie White, Associate Dean Learning Teaching and Quality, also includes ongoing training of health professionals.
• The psychological impact of pregnancy and childbirth and perinatal mental health. Depression during pregnancy is now as prevalent as postnatal depression, but treatment is often patchy because midwives do not have sufficient training to diagnose the condition. Professor Julie Jomeen suggests that women who have suffered with depression in pregnancy tend to endure mental health problems after the birth too, and that it is not uncommon for partners to also become depressed, which in turn can have an effect on the children too. Effective training to detect cases early and treat them is essential.

To find out more about our research, please visit this link. http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fhsc/research.aspx Or contact Kirsty Fishburn, Mental Health Lecturer, Tedl: 01482 464681

Guidance on the Administration to Adults of Oil-based Depot and other Long-Acting Intramuscular Injections

Dr Jacquie White

The fifth edition of the popular clinical resource Guidance on the Administration to Adults of Oil-based Depot and other Long-Acting Intramuscular Injections edited by Jacquie White and a Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist colleague Celia Feetam is now available  It is also available from, and endorsed by the College of Mental Health Pharmacy.

Effective Non-Medical Prescribing in Mental Health, 27 September 2016, Hallam Conference Centre, London

Kirsty Fishburn

Kirsty Fishburn, Mental Health Lecturer in the Faculty is presenting: Non Medical Prescribing in Mental Health at this conference.To tweet about the conference use #NMPrescribingMental and mention @HCUK

Research grant for faculty

Jane Wray [Senior Research Fellow], Eric Gardiner [Statistician] from the FHSC in collaboration with a research team from Humber Foundation Trust have been awarded £2781 of research capability funding from Hull Clinical Commissioning Group. These funds are to support continuation of their work on carer involvement in acute Mental Health Services. The team have been undertaking a pilot study to assess the impact of involving carers of people with mental health difficulties in risk assessment and now they have the opportunity to develop this area of research further.  For more information about the CIVRA [Carer Involvement in Risk Assessment] project, please contact Jane Wray or Haley Jackson, Research Nurse at Humber Foundation Trust.

Humber Foundation Trust colleagues presenting preliminary work from the CIVRA 

project at the NPNR conference in September 2015. L – R  Samantha Haigh

[Clinical Psychologist], Vicky Richards, [Assistant Psychologist], Dr Laura Stone

[Clinical Psychologist] Tracy Flanagan [Care Group Director], Meg Beadle

[Mental Health Nurse] Haley Jackson, [Research Nurse] and Dr Anne Parry, 

[Clinical Psychologist]

Award nomination for local maternal mental health group

Dean and Professor Julie Jomeen and colleagues from Hull and East Yorkshire NHS Trust, Humber NHS Tust, City

Julie Jomeen

Health Care Partnership, and Hull and East Yorkshire Care Commissioning Group who form the Hull and East Yorkshire Maternal Mental Health Advisory Group (chaired by Julie) have been nominated for an Royal College of Midwives working in partnership award. They are one of four nominees and go to London on the 7 December 2015 to present their case pending an award ceremony in March 2016 at which the winners will be announced.

New publication by Jacquie White

Jacquie White

Jacquie White has co-authored a commentary:

McKeown M, WHite J (2015) The future of mental health nursing: are we barking up the wrong tree?  Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing doi:10.1111/jpm.12247

This edition of Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing also includes an editorial from Richard Gray and a commentary from the past and present Chairs of Mental Health Nurse Academics UK. These both focus on the possible implications of the Shape of Caring Review.

RCN International Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research conference (NPNR) Manchester Conference Centre 17-18 September 2015

Jane Wray, Research Fellow, Department of Nursing

Jane Wray

It was a packed two days of keynotes, posters and concurrent sessions at the NPNR conference this year which took place at the Manchester Conference Centre. There were some great workshops too and I especially enjoyed the session by Dr Elizabeth Collier and Dr Russell Ashmore on ‘The Mental Health Needs of Transgendered People’. I was also introduced to the National Elf Service (@NatElfService) a resource for keeping up to date with research and a number of different specialist elves including the Mental Elf (@Mental_Elf).

I presented a paper as part of a symposium on ‘Working with Carers in an acute inpatient mental health settings’, co-presenting with colleagues from Humber Foundation Trust. The papers were on ‘Carer Involvement in Risk Assessment: A review of the literature’ (myself and Laura Stone), ‘An evaluation of carer involvement in inpatient services’ (Anne Parry and Victoria Richards) and ‘Developing a training package to increase carer involvement in risk assessment (Haley Jackson and Samantha Haigh). Chaired by Tracy Flanagan, Group Director of Humber Foundation Trust (and previously lecturer in mental health in the faculty) the papers represent several years of collaborative work in this area and on-going project examining the impact of carer involvement in assessing risk in MH settings.

See what was discussed at the conference #NPNR2015 or for more information about the research on carer involvement email me.

New publications by Catriona Jones and others in the Faculty (Jomeen, Hayter, Glover, Gardiner)

Catriona Jones

Catriona Jones has first authored:

Jones C, Jomeen J, Glover L, Gardiner E, Garg D, Marshall C (2015) Exploring changes in health visitors knowledge, confidence, and decision making for women with perinatal mental health difficulties following a brief training package.  European Journal for Person Centred Healthcare.  Vol 3, (3), pp 384 - 391

Jones C, Jomeen J, Hayter M (2015) A home-start peer support scheme for women with low mood following childbirth.  Community Practitioner, p 41 – 44

Julie Jomeen

Eric Gardiner

Mark Hayter

Lesley Glover

More from mental health week

Following our entry on Images from Mental Health Week:

Students Cara, Jess, Kayleigh, Laura, Matt and Musa  from Adult, Child, Learning Disability and Mental Health Nursing  met with almost 400 young people and staff in 8 schools and colleges  across the Humber last week to raise aspirations alongside awareness of careers in health and social care.

Invited to tell their personal stories the students inspired and enlightened, receiving fantastic feedback and invitations to return. One group of students just around the corner  at St Mary’s College were so impressed they sent the nursing  students own story!a thank you card to say they had changed their lives with new career directions…

As it was also Mental Health Awareness week self image, confidence and self esteem featured strongly in the sessions…… the pictures tell their own story:

Images from Mental Health Awareness week

Our clinical psychology trainees were raising the profile of mental health issues during the past week. The theme was mindfulness this year. They held a cake sale and staff visited the university library for a modest flash mob event, encouraging students and staff to take a moment, to be mindfully in the moment. Our HOLD colleague Tricia Boulton took some beautiful pictures of the group in and outside the library - see below:

Lancet publication by Charles J Shepherd

Charles Shepherd (recently retired from the Faculty), has co-authored: 

Simon Gilbody, Emily Peckham, Mei-See Man, Natasha Mitchell, Jinshuo Li, Taeko Becque, Catherine Hewitt, Sarah Knowles, Tim Bradshaw, Claire Planner, Steve Parrott, Susan Michie, Charles Shepherd (2015) Bespoke smoking cessation for people with severe mental ill
health (SCIMITAR): a pilot randomised controlled trial The Lancet Psychiatry doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366

A comment will be published online in due course by Simon Britton

On of our 3rd yer students reports on The Future of Mental Health Nursing

Catherine Groke writes:

As a third year Mental Health Nursing student we were offered the opportunity for a small group of us to attend The Future of MentalHealth Nursing conference held in London at the O2.  The objective was to bring together mental health nursing students from all over England and to inspire and motivate us. We would get to meet fellow student nurses, like minded wide eyed students who are full of ideas  and brimming with potential on how to change things for the better and who want to put patient care first and create a better future for mental health services.

After eagerly booking my train tickets I looked forward to the adventure of travelling down to London.  Although it was a rather early bleary eyed 5 am start, as I sat on my train large coffee in hand surrounded by business men and women in suits I felt alive and very excited for the day ahead. After navigating the London underground I arrived at the 02. Almost 500 of us gathered at our conference tables with our conference lanyards around our necks, Programme guides and 'goodie bags' in hand eagerly awaiting a full day of guest speakers. We were not  disappointed. The conference began with introductions about the day ahead before the comedienne Jo Brand came onto the stage to talk about her previous career as a mental health nurse and about her training in the late seventies/ early eighties. She was interviewed by Dr Edana Minghella a lady who she trained and worked with and provided us with amusing anecdotes and tales of her life and experience as a nurse. It was both entertaining and informative as she told us how she used to work in the crisis centres of South London during the times of the Brixton riots.

Following Jo we were introduced to Justyn Rees Larcombe a former army officer who had never gambled a day in his life until he was almost 40 years old. He used a free bet and then from that point he was hooked. He gave a heart wrenching account of how his addiction and deceit caused him to loose everything, his job wife and family. He had attempted to seek help but felt he was not really understood until the love and support of his mother helped him to turn around and realise he had hit rock bottom.  He has now transformed his life and now helps others.  Leading on from this tale of gambling addiction we were taken on the emotional rollercoaster of listening to Tommy Whitelaw. He lost his mother to dementia and it is his life’s mission to raise awareness of dementia and to keep his mother’s memory alive.  He gave a heart breaking account of the devastation dementia causes in families and told us how truly lost and isolated he felt in looking after his mother who slowly but surely lost a piece of herself at a time which could never be returned. There was not a dry eye in the house as he described his pain and experience of being a doting and caring son looking after his mother and the feelings of desperation he must have felt.  He encouraged us to sign his pledge and name what we promise to do now as future nurses caring for someone with dementia. 

After a small spot of lunch and networking opportunity the rest of the day provided more speakers from a variety of backgrounds who talked about research in mental health, the role of social media, the importance of networking and the role of the modern mental health nurse in a world where there is an increasing amount of drug and alcohol misuse. After a very long day we finished in the 02 VIP lounge where we enjoyed a complementary drink or two and mixed with other student nurses. Overall this was a fantastic opportunity, I left London that night feeling exhausted but inspired and motivated to be the best nurse that I can be. 

World Mental Health Day

Please help raise awareness of emotional well-being today on social media and in conversations, as it is World Mental Health Day, with the theme 'schizophrenia'. The Clinical Psychology Department is tweeting away; please read and re-tweet and help us get the messages out!

The Clinical Psychology course twitter feed is @ClinPsyD_Hull and my personal one is @Schlosspsych. We are highlighting issues of diagnosis, understanding emotional and relational difficulties, and how to respond to those. In the face of the election messages about more (unrealistic?) funding for mental health, it is all very topical. Let's break down stigma and challenge some assumptions about mental health and wellbeing!

Thanks for your support!

Annette Schlosser