Preventing mental illness: closing the evidence-practice gap through workforce and services planning
Files
(Published version)
Date
2015
Authors
Furber, G.
Segal, L.
Leach, M.
Turnbull, C.
Procter, N.
Diamond, M.
Miller, S.
McGorry, P.
Editors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Journal article
Citation
BMC Health Services Research, 2015; 15(283):1-14
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
Background: Mental illness is prevalent across the globe and affects multiple aspects of life. Despite advances in treatment, there is little evidence that prevalence rates of mental illness are falling. While the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancers are common in the policy dialogue and in service delivery, the prevention of mental illness remains a neglected area. There is accumulating evidence that mental illness is at least partially preventable, with increasing recognition that its antecedents are often found in infancy, childhood, adolescence and youth, creating multiple opportunities into young adulthood for prevention. Developing valid and reproducible methods for translating the evidence base in mental illness prevention into actionable policy recommendations is a crucial step in taking the prevention agenda forward.
Method: Building on an aetiological model of adult mental illness that emphasizes the importance of intervening during infancy, childhood, adolescence and youth, we adapted a workforce and service planning framework,originally applied to diabetes care, to the analysis of the workforce and service structures required for best-practice prevention of mental illness.
Results: The resulting framework consists of 6 steps that include identifying priority risk factors, profiling the population in terms of these risk factors to identify at-risk groups, matching these at-risk groups to best-practice interventions, translation of these interventions to competencies, translation of competencies to workforce and service estimates, and finally, exploring the policy implications of these workforce and services estimates. The framework outlines the specific tasks involved in translating the evidence-base in prevention, to clearly actionable workforce, service delivery and funding recommendations.
Conclusions: The framework describes the means to deliver mental illness prevention that the literature indicates is achievable, and is the basis of an ongoing project to model the workforce and service structures required for mental illness prevention.
School/Discipline
Dissertation Note
Provenance
Description
Access Status
Rights
Copyright 2015 Furber et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)