» Mental health education resources

Mental health education resources

Resources on this page have been sorted into three categories, physical health needs, suicide prevention/risk assessment and common mental health concerns seen in general practice.

Physical health needs of people with mental health conditions

Pinnacle MHN clinical audit: Monitoring of antipsychotics

Patients with serious mental illness have increased rates of metabolic disturbances such as obesity, diabetes and dyslipidaemia. They are also at increased risk of medical illness, particularly cardiovascular disease. Treatment with some antipsychotic medications can cause or aggravate these disorders. Guidelines recommend that certain medications have specific regular monitoring. This audit measures routine metabolic monitoring e.g. Weight/BMI, HbA1c, and lipids for a random set of patients who had been prescribed specific antipsychotics in the last 12-18 months. Secondary measurements include whether the patient has a primary indication for the medication and is on regular recall system.

Goodfellow Unit webinar: Prescribing antipsychotics in primary care

Webinar with Associate Professor David Menkes. Topics discussed:

which drug to choose
how to start the chosen drug
adverse effects
monitoring and compliance
how to withdraw patients from an antipsychotic drug
special focus on quetiapine: metabolic side effects, potential for abuse and doses for sleep versus antipsychotic.

Equally Well prescribing toolkit - Resources to inform a shared approach for the prescribing of medication

Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui has collaborated with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and Wellbeing Wellington to develop this toolkit to assist the conversations between a prescribing health professional and a person accessing their service about wellbeing and physical health. This includes specific implications of the medication(s) they are, or may be, prescribed and information on what could be involved in discontinuing the medication.

Suicide prevention / risk assessment in primary care

Suicide prevention: what can primary care do to make a difference?

BPAC NZ, November 2017

In late August, 2017 the Chief Coroner released a sombre statistic - 606 people in New Zealand died by suicide in the past 12 months; an increase for the third consecutive year and almost double the road toll. Age-standardised rates by ethnicity reveal that M?ori die by suicide at approximately twice the rate of non-M?ori. Young people are also over-represented in suicide statistics. New Zealand has the highest rate of youth suicide among 41 developed nations, with latest statistics showing that 15.6 adolescents per 100,000 aged 15 to 18 years died by suicide in New Zealand in 2012/13, compared to 3.0 in the United Kingdom, 6.8 in Australia and 7.6 in the United States.

Clearly we have a problem. There has been much effort from individuals and organisations around New Zealand in suicide prevention, but we are yet to find the right formula for reversing this phenomenon. The reasons for suicide are multifactorial, as are the reasons why it is so challenging to address this on a population level. What we can do, however, is to focus on an intervention, one person at a time.

Common mental health concerns in general practice

Goodfellow Unit webinar: FACT - Radical change is possible for patients in brief primary care visits

Kirk Strosahl discusses how Focussed Acceptance and Commitment therapy (FACT) can easily be introduced in very short change-oriented conversations, be it in a school nurse's office, a general practice visit or in a mental health therapy session.

Goodfellow Unit webinar: Antidepressants in primary care

Associate Professor David Menkes and Professor Bruce Arroll discussed the evidence for the benefit for antidepressants in primary care and cases to indicate:

how to do the first consultation
if and when to start antidepressants
when to increase the dose and when to change to another medication
what about augmentation with other medications such as benzodiazepines, antidepressants and antipsychotics
side effects
how to withdraw a patient from antidepressants.