Living Well Together (version 1/17/05/2022)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A social network-based intervention for improving the physical health of people with severe mental illness living in the community
IRAS ID
303882
Contact name
Denis Richards
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Canterbury Christ Church University
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
This study aims to address poor physical health among people with severe mental illness (SMI). The study is designed for the researcher to work together with service users, their families, and friends to develop an effective intervention that can be used to support individuals with SMI living in the community to improve their physical health. Called `Living Well Together’, the intervention will work by using the connections people with SMI have with these significant others (families, friends, as well as peers) to bring about a change in health behaviours by influencing their health beliefs, health care and lifestyle decisions, and use of healthcare services.
Evidence shows that people with SMI suffer more long-term medical conditions like diabetes, obesity, and heart diseases than the rest of the population. We also know that these physical health problems significantly increase the risk for COVID-19 infection especially for people with SMI. In turn, these conditions significantly affect daily functioning, contributes to social isolation and exclusion from employment opportunities, as well as increasing the risk of complications and premature death in this patient group. Thus, in formulating the research question, the study recognises this widening health inequality which exists between people with SMI and the rest of the population. While this study considers the continued effort by others to address the existing problem of poor physical health in the SMI population, this has become even more urgent at a time of the recent and ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these efforts, a review of the literature has shown that many of these studies have attempted to address this issue by adopting the more traditional health promotion approaches in both their design and intervention strategies (e.g., education and information-sharing). These approaches appear to place the responsibility for physical health promotion mainly on the affected individuals, with very little consideration given to other factors such as the role of the individual’s social network and the wider environment. In closing the existing gap, this study will adopt co-production as its overarching methodological approach. In other words, this study has been designed to allow service users to work together with members of the public, as well as with formal carers from the health and social care professions across both the design and development stages of the intervention. Thus, the study will actively seek the input of the relevant professionals (i.e., nurses, occupational therapists, healthcare assistants, support workers, General Practitioners, and social workers) through regular meetings to address any issues with participant recruitment and retention, including issues relating to access to resources, relapse indicators of participating service users, or the general wellbeing of all participants.
The study will be conducted over 18 months across three community mental health teams in South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust in London. The target population for this study includes all service users with SMI who are currently receiving care from these community teams in SLaM, as well as their families and friends. Each participant will be asked to take part in a short interview to talk about their experiences. Only the processed or synthesised data from the interviews will be used in these workshops, while all personal or identifiable information from these interviews will be omitted. This will be followed by 3 workshops where participants from the interview phase will work with the researcher, together with selected health care professionals from those community teams to design and develop the intervention for this study. The workshop phase will be followed by a final meeting where participants will talk about how the intervention will work in different settings, and to share their experience of taking part in the study.REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/LO/0407
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jun 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion