Carers

Rethink aims to recognise the experiences of families and friends of people with mental health problems, and identify areas where they could be better supported in order to reduce stress and improve quality of life for them and the people they care for.

People who care for individuals with severe mental health problems also need to have their needs assessed and be supported, be able to access appropriate and timely information and be valued as ‘partners in care’.

Completed studies

  • Who cares? – This survey report looks at how easy it was for people caring for some one with a mental illness to access the support, information and services they need to fulfil their vital, but often unrecognised, role.
  • Future Perfect - Mental health service users set out a vision for the 21st century - This report is the result of a series of focus groups carried out by Rethink with service users and carers. A challenging scenario was put to the service users and carers we approached: What might the future look
    like without psychiatric hospitals?
  • Under Pressure (190 kb) [pdf] – This survey report looks at the impact of caring has upon people supporting family members, partners or friends with mental health problems. 
  • Dual Diagnosis Executive Summary (155 kb) [pdf] – This is a piece of research looking at the experience of living with ‘dual diagnosis’ (i.e. severe mental illness and use of substances such as street drugs or alcohol) from the perspective of 11 service users and 13 carers. 
  • Information Sharing in Mental Health (532 kb) [pdf] – This piece of work identified best practices for information sharing in mental health where mental health professionals and working with carers. It is well documented that carers require information to support them in their caring role, but that the rights of the service user to privacy (termed patient confidentiality) does cause difficulties in practice. The Institute of psychiatry and Rethink collaborated on a project to develop a framework to guide information best practice. 
  • Carer involvement in MHRN - Scoping study for the addressing how carers can become more involved in the work of the network. A report summarising recommendations from the consultation is available at UK Mental Health Research Network  [www]

Current research

  • CUES-C - The Carers and Users Expectation of Services – Carers Version re-development Project is developing and testing a questionnaire to assess carers’ wellbeing and levels of support.  It has been developed with groups of carers and is currently undergoing field trials.  The project is being carried out in partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Alzheimer’s Society.
  • Confidentiality Training Project- The aim of this project is to produce a set of training materials with carers, service users and professionals, which can be used to train professionals in the various aspects of information sharing across different settings. The project started in June 2007 and will run to August 2008.