Edward Peck

Users as partners in mental health-ten years of experience

Over the past 12 years users of mental health services have been striving to ensure that they have a greater voice in the development and running of mental health services. This article provides an overview of the historical, cultural and political factors surrounding the development of users as partners in mental health, a description of the main developments since 1985, and a commentary on areas requiring further development.

Community Mental Health Centres: Challenges to the new orthodoxy

CMHC/Ts have become a commonplace component of mental health service design in the UK. After a short resume of the background to the creation of CMHCs and their record to date, the paper argues that GP fundholding and care management contain challenges to the CMHC/T model that may undermine the preeminence of the model in community mental health services.

Piths, Pearls, and Provocation: Quality Criteria for Qualitative Research: Does Context Make a Difference?

Although qualitative research has considerable strengths both in assessing the effectiveness of organizational models of health care provision and in contributing to their development, its impact on local and national decision making in the United Kingdom appears to be negligible. This article examines three obstacles to the acceptance of qualitative research, illustrating some ways around them drawn from recent research at the Centre for Mental Health Services Development. However, our illustrations throw into relief the potential for tensions between the pragmatic world of health care management and the quality and integrity of qualitative research. The authors, therefore, examine these tensions with reference to recent work on the development of quality criteria and discuss some of the solutions they have attempted.

Evaluation of the Implementation of the Mental Health Review in Somerset: Methodology

This paper is the first of two discussing the evaluation of the implementation of joint commissioning and integrated provision of mental health services in Somerset. The paper presents the methods of evaluation, and explores the potential limitations and environmental factors impacting on the effectiveness of data‐collection methods.

Managing mental health services in London

Although the growth of managerialism in mental health services has been a central theme of the last decade, little research appears to have been undertaken on the views of these increasingly important players. In July 1996, researchers at the Centre for Mental Health Services Development interviewed and collected narratives dictated by 57 senior managers of mental health services in London. The analysis of these interviews and narratives formed a central component of Londons Mental Health, the report of the Kings Fund London Commission. During July 1997, the current authors sent a follow-up postal questionnaire to the 78 most senior managers of mental health services within health authorities, local authorities and trusts in London to establish how views had changed during the 12 months since the original interviews. Fifty-three managers returned completed questionnaires. This paper analyses their responses and compares them with responses to the original study. We trace discernible trends in the views ...

Evaluation of the Implementation of the Mental Health Review in Somerset: Results from the Baseline Data Collection

The paper presents baseline results from the evaluation of the implementation of a joint commissioning and integrated service provision initiative in mental health services in England. Comparisons are made with published research, and key themes for the continuing evaluation are discussed. Finally, the paper reflects on some immediate challenges facing the new arrangements.

Health Action Zones: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Health and Health Care?

This Paper Looks at Health Action Zones, to be established from April 1998 with the intention of moving towards prevention of illness and promotion of health. It suggests how localities could begin to conceptualise a programme of work, and warns of some of the difficulties they may meet.