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      • Depression and men
      • Eating well and mental health
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      • Learning disabilities
      • Medically unexplained symptoms
      • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
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      • Personality disorder
      • Postnatal depression
      • Physical illness
      • Postpartum psychosis
      • Problem gambling
      • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
      • Schizoaffective disorder
      • Schizophrenia
      • Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
      • Self harm
      • Shyness and social phobia
      • Sleeping well
      • Perinatal OCD for carers
      • Postpartum Psychosis in Carers
      • Postnatal depression key facts
      • Postnatal depression: information for carers
    • Support, care and treatment
      • Alzheimers drug treatments
      • Antidepressants
      • Antipsychotics
      • Being sectioned
      • Benzodiazepines
      • Bipolar medications
      • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
      • Complementary and alternative medicines: herbal remedies
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      • Depot medication
      • Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards
      • Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
      • Electronic health records in mental health services in England
      • Guide to mental health tribunals
      • Liaison psychiatry services
      • Mental capacity and the law
      • Mental health rehabilitation services
      • Mental health services and teams in the community
      • Planning a pregnancy
      • Psychotherapies and psychological treatments
      • Spirituality and mental health
      • Stopping antidepressants
      • Talking to your GP
      • What to expect of your psychiatrist in the UK
      • Antipsychotics in Pregnancy
      • Lithium in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding
      • Mother and Baby Units (MBUs)
      • Children's Social Services and Safeguarding
      • Valproate in women and girls who could get pregnant
      • What are Perinatal Mental Health Services?
      • Mental health in pregnancy
      • Medication for mental health and COVID-19
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      • Monitoring health at home and COVID-19
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      • Eating disorders and COVID-19
      • Perinatal care and COVID-19
      • COVID-19: Self-harm in young people 
      • COVID-19: Self-harm and suicide 
      • COVID-19: Looking after your mental health – for young people and their parents and carers 
      • COVID-19: Using drugs
      • COVID-19: ASD
    • Young people's mental health
    • Translations
      • Arabic عربى
      • Bengali বাঙালি
      • Bulgarian български
      • Chinese 中文
      • French Français
      • German Auf Deutsch
      • Greek Ελληνική γλώσσα
      • Gujurati ગુજરાતી
      • Hindi हिंदीहिंदी
      • Italian italiano
      • Japanese 日本語
      • Lithuanian Lietuvių kalba
      • Pashto پښتو
      • Persian (Farsi) فارسی
      • Polish Polski
      • Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
      • Romanian Română
      • Russian Pусский
      • Somali
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      • Turkish
      • Tamil தமிழ்
      • Urdu اردو
      • Welsh Cymraeg
    • Mental health FAQs
    • Order mental health leaflets
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    • Disclaimer about our mental health information
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    • BSL translations
    • MindEd: web tools for those working with young people
    • Order mental health packs for schools
    • Audio resources
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Back to Blog

Inspiration and reasons for optimism

Presidents blog

26 November, 2020

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Since the last newsletter most of you will be living in lockdown once again. I'm aware of the impact this has on you individually, and for friends and family. It also has consequences for our patients and the support that we are able to provide. I've been inspired by the commitment of all of you, and the ways you’ve innovated during this time to continue to provide compassionate and person-centred care.

Although we’re in lockdown once again, there is a cautious but strong optimism in relation to vaccine development and testing. In all my interactions with policymakers I have kept mental health at the top of the agenda. I’ve continued to meet with the Chief Medical Officer for England, the National Medical Director of NHS England, and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and their ministerial team. This has included pressing for a fair deal for mental health in the comprehensive spending review to try to boost our addiction services, fund our expanding workforce, invest in training, and repair and revive the mental health estate.

We had the good news over the weekend that the government has announced a £500 million package to support mental health services in England in the wake of the pandemic, as well as additional investment for services in the devolved nations. This is a welcome step forward, but we know we must keep going and continue our work to improve services and secure investment for mental health in the areas outlined above.

A huge contribution

The highlight of my month has been the RCPsych Awards 2020 and our presentation ceremony where we recognised the huge contribution of so many of you to our field. I was moved by many of the acceptance speeches that showed how people had struggled against personal and professional adversity, but had come through to provide some of the most excellent services for patients. Baroness Murphy was the recipient of our Lifetime Achievement award. She has been a great role model for academics, managers and leaders, and for women getting to the top of whatever field they choose. She also showed great kindness to many along the way, and was always great fun to work with.

Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones was Psychiatrist of the Year and has developed new and much needed services for gambling and gaming addiction. Dr Syed Naqvi won the Specialty Doctor of the Year award and gave the most moving acceptance speech about how he had been inspired by his hero, his own son who had met the challenge of disability with such positivity and resolve. There was a tear in the eyes of us all.

I also recently met with Alistair Thompson and Raphael Kelvin from MindEd to hear about the amazing work they are doing in creating educational materials for patients, families and people working in non-medical professions who have a great influence on mental health. They've created some great resources around helping children and families manage during the pandemic. The newsletter gives more details and I would strongly recommend that you access the resources. I'm very grateful for the work they do, and to all of you who act as experts to advise on evidence-based resources.

My congratulations also go to the CCQI who published the 15th anniversary report for the Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health (POMH-UK). POMH is one of the CCQI’s biggest successes and has been working with mental health services to help them improve their prescribing practice for 15 years. My thanks go to clinical leads Professor Tom Barnes and Dr Carol Paton for their great work.

One important election appears now to have reached a firm conclusion, and we will shortly be in our own election season. We have four excellent candidates for Dean and three for Treasurer. We have arranged hustings which I will chair on the 3 and 10 December. It would be great if as many of you as possible could contribute to these, and I would urge all of you to vote so that all our members are involved in choosing those who will represent you in these important roles.

Eco-distress has been very much in the headlines and is important that there is a clear response. First we must live up to our responsibilities in fighting the climate and ecological emergencies. But we must also respond to the anxiety that this can cause in people, and in particular in young people. I hope that there will be productive discussions to move work on this forward, and we’ve been working hard with both members and lived experience partners to contribute to the discussion and share our perspectives.

Steps forward on equality

We’ve also been taking steps forward in our work on equality and diversity. We have been joining conversations with many of our stakeholders on work to address the impact of Covid-19 on different communities, both in the NHS workforce and the wider community. I’m also looking forward to working with colleagues and stakeholders on our new collaborative to support mental health trusts in implementing the AMHE tool. Furthermore, we’ve been continuing to progress our College strategy and action plan on equality and equity, and have contributed to an Academy of Medical Royal Colleges survey on action to advance race equality.

We’re continuing our work to support workforce, in particular workforce wellbeing. We’re also working to advance our calls for workforce expansion. The pandemic means that it would be both unsustainable and unethical to over-rely on international recruitment. Given the current context, we decided to run an engagement exercise with a group of experts to think practically and creatively about how we can train and support the psychiatric workforce that will be needed once the pandemic has passed. We hope this will help enable the College to offer positive solutions and to influence any service reconfiguration across the UK.

Finally, our parity work is continuing too, with the recent announcement a step forward, but with all our projects and work to help achieve parity still pushing forward. We are continuously progressing our work to ensure that mental health is on the agenda in the context of the pandemic, and are always reviewing and updating our guidance for clinicians to help support our members and wider mental health services to be able to provide safe and effective care whilst protecting our patients and colleagues.

I understand it is an exceptionally busy time for all of us right now, and I hope that all of you manage to take some time over the winter break to recharge and relax. My thanks and support go out to all of you continuing your work to support people affected by mental illness at this challenging time.


This blog post originally appeared in the November 2020 Members' eNewsletter.

Blog Author
Dr Adrian James
Dr Adrian James

President

Adrian was elected President in 2020. He holds this role until 2023 and leads the RCPsych on behalf of its members and associates.

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