Highlights from the Psychosis Health Integration Team

Psychosis Health Integration Team (HIT) Directors Dr Sarah Sullivan, Dr Simon Downer, James Robinson and Martha Sneyd give an update on the team’s activities in 2017-18.

The Psychosis HIT is a team of people who experience psychosis, those close to them, academics, mental health professionals, commissioners, service providers and other experts. We are working together to improve the support, treatment, services and lives of people with psychosis in the Bristol area.

The highlight of our year was the ‘Rewriting Psychosis’ event. On 20 January, we brought over 130 people together to consider: ‘How can people who experience psychosis, those close to them, health professionals, activists and researchers build a new story about psychosis where thriving and resilience are a potential outcome, rather than hopelessness and stigma?’ The event was devised and led by our Peer Directors Martha Sneyd and James Robinson. To spark debate, we showed CRAZYWISE, a documentary about different cultures’ definitions and response to psychosis. Our audience told us:

“I found the large numbers attending very heart warming and the intro with two very honest and courageous professionals was really a tremendous start.”

“An extremely moving and informative event.”

We’ve been invited to share our best practice by the BFI Film Audience Network for their Inclusive Cinema digital resource.

The event has also led to a potential research project focussing on improving service users’ experience of being in hospital.

Our existing research projects have continued to make good progress. In collaboration with NIHR CLAHRC West, we completed work with Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd to evaluate the impact of an algorithm to predict relapse in psychosis.

We finished collecting qualitative data from service users and crisis team staff for our project to investigate local crisis response. We are now working to try and influence NICE guidance on this subject.

We were also pleased to progress through stage one of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment process. This is for our project on prediction modelling and external validation of secondary care ‘risk of psychosis’ assessments.

We have been planning a funding bid to investigate a better way of managing the discharge of people with psychosis who are stable from secondary to primary care. This will also explore a way of helping GPs to care for this group better.

We are also investigating the association between being prescribed more than one antipsychotic medication and being diagnosed and treated for metabolic disorders such as diabetes and hyper tension.

Our service user forum identified a problem with the way that GP IT systems ‘red flag’ psychosis on computers, which can harm open interactions. We’ve worked with local colleagues to help change this. The forum remains at the heart of the HIT, and we’re looking forward to developing more projects that matter for local people with experience of psychosis.