Mental health prevention and promotion in general practice settings
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mental Health Prevention and Promotion in General Practice Settings: A Feasibility Study - MEND study
IRAS ID
323448
Contact name
MIRANDA Budd
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 0 days
Research summary
The number of people struggling with their mental health is rising. Soon, the NHS may not be able to meet the demand on mental health services. Offering preventative mental health support may stop people from developing more serious mental health problems. The study aims to understand how preventative mental health support can be delivered in a general practice (GP) setting.
The study will recruit individuals from GP settings and randomly allocate them to two groups. One group will be invited to engage in a brief, menu based psychological intervention alongside their treatment as usual. The main aim of the intervention is to explore if it’s possible to help people when they are first struggling, by teaching them how to look after their emotional wellbeing. The second group will receive treatment as usual and the research team will stay in touch with them too.
Participants: 60 adult patients at a GP surgery in Lancashire, with mild-moderate mental health difficulties who agree to participate. Half of the patients will receive the usual input from their GPs (10-minute appointments). The rest will be offered four weekly 45-minutes of the intervention session.
The feasibility study will test:
1. Whether people are happy to sign-up for, and then stay in the study.
2. Whether people are happy to fill in questionnaires about their wellbeing.
3. What helped, or indeed, stopped the study from running smoothly.
4. Whether the study is safe for everyone involved.We will look at how many people sign-up, attend or drop-out of the intervention to answer these questions. Questionnaires and interviews will be done with participants, GP staff and the researchers to understand why the intervention service worked/did not work and how they felt about the study design.
As a new area of research, this ‘feasibility study’ is needed to help design, plan and justify a larger study.
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NW/0117
Date of REC Opinion
10 May 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion