South Eastern Division Newsletter

The South Eastern Division editorial team encourages submissions from anyone. We will consider any article that may be of interest to our readers in the RCPsych South Eastern Division. This includes submissions from service users, carers, students, clinicians, psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, social workers, and members of the wider multidisciplinary workforce.

Diversity

The South Eastern Division is committed to representing the diverse workforce of the RCPsych South Eastern Division. Regardless of article topic, we encourage authors to consider diverse perspectives and issues of equality within their writing. We seek to reduce barriers to publication for International Medical Graduates and we will, where appropriate and if requested, offer additional assistance in developing articles from authors for whom English is not their primary language.

We are now accepting articles for the Autumn edition of the South Eastern Division Newsletter.

The theme for this edition is Inequalities in Mental Health.

Addressing health inequalities has been a priority in mental health for years.  In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become more important than ever.  The virus and its social and economic impact are disproportionately impacting specific groups, including black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.  While government investigates the cause of this, we need to be committed to supporting local health systems to better address inequalities in access, experience and outcomes of mental healthcare.

Furthermore, the Black Lives Matter movement has brought racial inequality to the forefront of everyone’s minds, globally, and its momentum gives us the opportunity to challenge past and ongoing injustices and drive forward with greater pace and conviction.

There is no doubt that as a sector we need to do more to better protect and support our staff and patients from BAME backgrounds, and we fully believe that the NHS should be a leader in the fight against inequalities. We need to do all in our power to make sure we continue to advance equalities within mental health service delivery. 

Tackling inequalities, especially racism, is vital, emotive and challenging. It requires leaders, organisations and individuals to understand their own biases, beliefs and behaviours. It requires every component of the systems we operate within to acknowledge the stark reality of inequality. We will only tackle inequalities by understanding people’s experience of them and acting to change. 

What has been your experience?  What is your organisation doing to tackle Mental Health inequalities? What are the key objectives to achieve equality backed by research?  We would love to hear from you. 

We welcome your contribution to this theme and as always, we also have the following features to which you can contribute articles:

• Conference Watch – conferences you have attended related to psychiatry
• Culture Vulture – articles relating to your insights, interpretations and observations of relevant popular culture, the arts and theatre in the capital related to psychiatry
• Facetime – an interview with someone in the world of London psychiatry – professional or service user, local hero, or London icon
• What is happening in your region – Let us know what is going on in your local Trust or service. We accept articles on service improvement, diversity initiatives, sustainability initiatives, areas for improvement, reasons to celebrate, and stories from the workplace. Essentially, anything that relates to your area of work that would be of interest to the London Division. Articles must be in a non-academic, narrative style, in keeping with the magazine style of the newsletter. These should be from a personal perspective and reflect personal experience/opinion. Please do not submit case studies or articles containing identifying service user information.

Details for submissions

All article submissions must use the newsletter template and save the file as:

'Your full name_Autumn Edition 2023'

Maximum word count and article guidelines:

• 500-1000 words for themed articles
• 400-600 words for other non-themed articles
• No more than five references should be included for each article.

Deadline

Please submit your article via email to Karen Morgan by 30 October 2023.