Man Uni student suffering from schizophrenia faces daily battle with ‘evil voices’
A Manchester man who suffers from schizophrenia has got his life back on track despite still hearing ‘disturbing voices’ on a daily basis.
Colin Evans, 31, from Littleborough, was diagnosed with the disorder at university in 2003, aged 20, and subsequently had to drop out and move back home with his parents.
Welfare cuts will push Britain’s mental health services towards crisis
Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Iain Duncan Smith, recently proposed a further £12 billion of cuts to benefits. Making such cuts is likely to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including those with mental health problems and other disabilities. After all, approximately half of people who need support from the disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) do so because of their mental health.
CHIC Seminar ‘Apps for Mental Health’
The next Connected Health Innovation Centre Seminar on “Apps for Mental Health” will take place on 16th April 2015.
John Ainsworth, Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Infomatics and the Health e-Research Centre, will present ‘Adventures in Connected Health: ClinTouch, CareLoop, Actissist and beyond.’ John’s research focuses on areas such as applying information technology to improve healthcare, harnessing computing technology to enable novel clincial research and the development of software as a diagnostic/ therapeutic medical device.
Coronation Street actor killed himself hours after finding out about his father’s death
Coronation Street actor Trevor Smith killed himself just hours after learning that his father had died, an inquest heard.
Police discovered the 42-year-old had been struggling with his stuttering career, stress and his sexuality in the months before he committed suicide.
Only a week before he threw himself into a lagoon at a disused quarry after self-harming at his home when he became overwhelmed by events in his life.
Crisis in Mental Health and Social Care Conference
Saturday 14th March 11am-3pm
Manchester Methodist Hall
Because of the very drastic cuts by the NHS and Manchester City Council, it is quite obvious to Service Users, Carers and other members of the public that Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust, cannot provide Services in order to treat patients who suffer from “severe & enduring mental illness”, which is putting them at serious and dangerous risk, such as their physical health, their absolute poverty (e.g. homelessness, starvation, hardship etc), as well as their need for formal in-patient services and suicide or other premature death.
CCGs and local authorities have invested £2.4 million in an online webtool for patients to ‘self manage’ their mental health.
The webtool, expected to launch in the autumn, will be commissioned led by NHS Tower Hamlets CCG, but will be available to patients in all of London. It has been jointly funded by all of the CCGs and the local authorities.
The tool, that will be available on both desktop and mobile platforms will give patients access to online information and support, while being monitored by mental health professionals.
It is designed to cut costs and reduce pressure on other services, CCG leaders said, as a recent report by the Greater London Authority revealed that poor mental health costs London a total of £26bn each year including health and social care to treat illness, benefits to support people living with mental ill health, costs to education services and the criminal justice system, and issues such as reduced productivity and quality of life.
A Canadian doctor has created an app, dubbed as an ‘Instagram for Doctors’, which is helping Manchester medical students with their studies.
The creator of “Figure 1″, Dr. Joshua Landy, is a critical care specialist at the Scarborough Hospital in Toronto. Along with his co-founders Gregory Levey and Richard Penner, his goal was to create a “network where healthcare professionals could share images and create discussions.”
Greater Manchester Police has collaborated with Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMW ) to provide a training programme for staff that improves the understanding of mental health.
Researchers from The University of Manchester’s National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness investigated whether suicides were related to the way mental health services were organised based on staff and patient surveys, national databases and other records. Their report “Healthy Services and Safer Patients” is based on 13,960 patient suicides from 2004-12.
