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Conference gets people thinking about mental illness and palliative care

10 November 2011

Visitors to our fifth annual conference have looked into the challenges of caring for people with mental health problems or addiction and life-limiting illness.

Simon Lawton-Smith, Head of Policy at the Mental Health Foundation, also gave attendees an insight into the foundation’s research, due to be published next year, The research has identified incorrect use of the Mental Capacity Act and confusion about professional’s ability to make decisions about people with dementia’s ability to carry out an action or decide on it.

More than 60 people, including psychiatrists, doctors, social workers and other clinical team members from various hospices, attended our Annual Conference on November 3rd.

The day was kicked off by Dr Willy Notcutt, who spoke on ethical approaches to affect safe pain management for people with physical dependence or addiction and palliative care needs. They also heard Hospice staff present case studies about patients who also had mental health problems and how they were supported.

Caroline Scates, Head of Education, thanked the conference sponsors – Lundbeck and Cephalon and said: “The day was a great success and very inspirational as it was a topic we have not had the opportunity of exploring in such depth before. The feedback was great, with attendees saying how much they had learnt about how mental health and palliative care professionals work together.”

She added: “We chose to focus on when chronic mental illness and palliative care meet because there is little literature or research on how best to support these patients. We have decided the theme of next year’s conference will be dementia and end of life care.”

Last year the Hospice cared for 22 people with a recorded mental health background and life-limiting illness.

Find out more about other training provided by the education team here.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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