One participant described their first section: "I was taken to hospital in a black van by three people not wearing uniforms. I thought I had been kidnapped." This study centres lived experience to show what needs to change in mental health services. Read the blog: buff.ly/AhjXQr8

Nurse and support worker charged with ill-treatment of patients detained a medium-secure mental health unit - www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New paper by @bethlgriffin.bsky.social, the 2nd from her PhD is available online today! This paper explores the impact of restrictive practices on psychological safety from the perspective of former patients. The open access paper can be viewed here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hospital appointment today for ongoing physical effects from OCD. From an injury that was almost ten years ago. I’ve had some physical healthcare but not help for OCD. I’ve had zero therapy for OCD. I’ve been waiting for NHS treatment for over 6 years. It’s no closer www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

NEW BLOG - "Make Sure & Always Respond" Some reflections on this week's @c4dispatches.bsky.social , esp on the PR response by NPCC to the programme. mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/m...

“I fear that in unleashing A.I. companions, we may be making it easier for our loved ones to avoid talking to humans about the hardest things, including suicide. This is a problem that smarter minds than mine will have to solve. (If yours is one of those minds, please start.)”

Another new Preventing Future Death report, citing "Right Care, Right Person" - • 16 inquests, 6 more pending • 14 PFDs, 13 offering crucial or insight we need to pay attention to. www.judiciary.uk/prevention-o...

New paper www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@debcoles13.bsky.social could you follow me so I can message you?

In a historic trial, a London NHS Trust and the former ward manager have today been found guilty of breaching the Health and Safety Act, following the death of 22 year old Alice Figueiredo in one of its hospitals in 2015.

A tragic case that seems to illustrate the dangers of a simplistic understanding of the police role. Even when there's no crime or danger to others, police may have needed authority that other responders don't ("the mental health crisis team do not have the power to enter locked premises...").

Yet another new PREVENTING FUTURE DEATHS report related to “Right Care, Right Person” — NPCC and the College of Policing might have to start accepting there are some entirely predicted problems here with #RCRP. www.judiciary.uk/prevention-o...

New PREVENTING FUTURE DEATH REPORT from West Yorkshire - RCRP related - and not the first RCRP related inquest for @WestYorksPolice - failure to identify a welfare check request as being missing person. Call sent to ambulance but no location known. www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/u...

Today’s #ResearchTip is if you’re using an acronym to describe your study ensure it is clear, respectful, and does not imply cures or other promises your work cannot deliver. I’ve seen trials and other studies using acronyms like “hope” “calm” or “care” when they won't offer ANY of these things.

I’m in the Guardian today, arguing that we should stop them all-class mental health lessons in schools I've thought very carefully about ‘going public’ with this, because it's a sensitive argument to make, especially in the face of so many young people struggling. (cont 🧵) tinyurl.com/vun92cz7

Psychiatric abuse for the moral correction of young women - a deep shame which mental health care is yet to face up to - and has which sadly continued in other forms long beyond this time www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

NEW BLOG - "The 135 / 136 Amendment" My observations on the UK House of Lords vote to extend legal powers to remove someone to a Place of Safety beyond the police to a wider group called the "authorised person". mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/2025/04/02/t...

There’ve been a lot of these cases lately. They raise complicated issues, but at the end of the day I do think it’s good to establish the principle that there are risks (and maybe liability) on both sides when dispatchers have to decide whether to send the cops.

This is awful. Reading it, I also felt for all the women who do have mental health problems who are disbelieved and seen as less credible. As well as the false labelling of mental health problems, the disbelief of people with mental health problems causes harm too. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Scotland's Justice Secretary Angela Constance has confirmed that family members involved in deaths of custody are to have immediate, free access to legal aid support and advice from 7 April 2025. She said "This is about changing the system and the culture that underpins it."

NEW: Weekend News Agents A special ep on one of the most shocking scandal I’ve reported on: the generation of disabled children created by the British state. A responsibility it is still refusing to pay for. The shocking story of Sodium Valproate. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

“Pilots and air traffic controllers must be deemed medically fit by the FAA through a certification process — one that is particularly arduous when it involves mental-health diagnose.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/m... via @NYTimes

I research the issue of overdiagnosis in young people, and I think it’s essential to examine whether this is happening. But *in parallel*: some people who self-diagnose are correct; plenty of people seeking help really need it. We need to be really really careful that this message doesn’t get lost

If this overdiagnosis argument is proposed without care, it becomes fodder for young people to be disbelieved. There's a general attitude that young people today are exaggerating or faking diagnoses, particularly those who self-diagnose. We highlight this in the below paper tinyurl.com/yc5aneyp

Black women in the UK are still more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts. @samaralinton.com explores why—and what’s being done to improve outcomes

I wrote about my brother Charlie’s final 48 hours, and his increasingly desperate attempts to track down an emergency supply of medication from the NHS. It’s an upsetting read but one I’m proud of. He’d be delighted to have made the @financialtimes.com magazine front cover: on.ft.com/434zZqn

A former surgeon accused of raping or sexually assaulting hundreds of young patients, some while they were under anesthetic, went on trial in France's largest ever child sexual abuse case reut.rs/3DhiPLH

Migraine has been an area where lots of progress has been made very quickly and this is a great piece in Nature that covers the state of the field www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Psychiatrist Allan House was permitted, like me, to speak to the assisted dying committee - but only after it first tried to ban @rcpsych.bsky.social’s testimony. Pls read his letter. How is the committee remotely serious about protecting the vulnerable if it dismisses the doctors who treat them?

“I can’t believe that human beings could watch another human being in such a desperate state – pleading for help – & not intervene. Jason was just left. There was no mental-health intervention, there was no medication." - Joyce McQuoid, aunt of Jason, who died a self-inflicted death in HMP Risley