NICE Clinical Guidelines
The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) is
one of seven centres established by the National Institute
for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to develop
guidance on the appropriate treatment and care of people with
specific diseases and conditions within the NHS in England and
Wales.
Established in 2001, the NCCMH is responsible for developing
mental health guidelines, and is a partnership between the Royal
College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society.
What can guidelines achieve?
The aims of guidelines are to bring about genuine and lasting
improvements in patient care. Well-constructed and up-to-date
clinical guidelines:
- provide recommendations for the treatment and care of people by
healthcare professionals;
- can be used to develop standards to assess the clinical
practice of individual healthcare professionals;
- can be used in the education and training of healthcare
professionals;
- can help patients to make informed decisions, and improve
communication between the patient and healthcare professional.
In addition to contributing to the changes described above,
clinical guidelines should also raise the profile of research with
both practitioners and the public.
How are guidelines developed?
Guidelines are based on the best available research evidence.
The NCCMH establishes a Guideline Development Group (GDG) for each
guideline, consisting of health and social care professionals, lay
representatives, and technical experts. The GDG develops each
guideline by assessing the available evidence and deriving from it
a series of clinical recommendations. Research recommendations are
also developed which highlight gaps in the evidence to inform
future research in this area.
For further information on how guidelines are produced, please
visit the NICE website or the
NCCMH website.
Hard copies of the full guidelines are available
from RCPsych
Publications. NICE guidelines cannot be
obtained in print from any other source.
What guidelines have been developed or are under
development?
Guideline Implementation
In order for guidelines to be used effectively in practice,
their systematic implementation is crucial. Although the ultimate
responsibility for implementation lies with each individual NHS
organisation, NICE and the NCCMH recognise that this is a
significant challenge for the NHS. As such, NICE have developed a
programme for supporting
implementation of all their guidance.
The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health,
through both the CRTU and CORE, also supports a significant
programme of implementation and evaluation of mental health
guidelines.
There are also some
NICE quality standards which have been developed for a selected
list of mental health issues.
For more information on the guidelines and their
development, please contact Head of NCCMH
Christine Sealey on csealey@cru.rcpsych.ac.uk