Validating SNAP Mental Health Tool
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Validating the adapted SNAP for Mental Health (SNAP: the Support Needs Approach for Patients)
IRAS ID
330500
Contact name
Morag Farquhar
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East Anglia
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 0 days
Research summary
Research Summary:
Background/Aims:
Health care should be driven by patients’ needs. This is known as “person-centred care”. Our team developed a way to do this called the Support Needs Approach for Patients (SNAP: https://thesnap.org.uk/). SNAP uses: 1) a tool (a booklet called the “How are you?” Booklet, containing a set of questions to help patients think about areas where they need more support) and 2) a focused conversation between the patient and healthcare professional to help address those needs.
SNAP was developed for patients with chronic lung disease but is being successfully used with patients with chronic progressive conditions more widely. Mental health professionals suggested SNAP may also be useful for their service users but that the SNAP Tool may need adapting. In response we ran a study to adapt the tool for mental health services-users. We now need to check the adapted tool covers relevant areas of need and makes sense to service users. We also want to explore how SNAP can be used in mental health services.
What does the study involve?
Adults who currently, or recently, used mental health services will be invited to take part in either:
1) a discussion group – to consider the layout, relevance, and use of the adapted tool (we aim to run four groups of 3-4 people per group, either on-line or face-to-face); or,
2) a survey which asks people to complete the adapted tool (we will aim for 40 completed surveys).
Two healthcare trusts will help us find people to take part.
Working with Public and Patient Involvement advisors we will use findings from the discussion groups and survey to produce the final version of the adapted SNAP Tool for mental health service users. We will also identify possible ways of using SNAP in mental health services.
Funded by NIHR Applied Research Collaboration.Lay summary of study results: Background We had previously developed a short set of questions to help people identify and discuss their concerns with health care staff, but the questions were not developed for people with mental health conditions, so we worked with mental health service users to adapt the questions. We then asked a further group of service users to help us check whether these adapted questions would work for other mental health service users.
What did we do in the study?
We asked service users to take part in a short survey (by post or online) that included the adapted set of seventeen questions and some brief background questions. We needed to get between 40 and 60 replies to the survey to feel confident in the findings and we achieved this – we received over 40 replies.What did we find out?
The questions asked service users about areas of support need:
• The most common area of support need identified through the questions was ‘dealing with your feelings and worries’, followed by ‘looking after any physical health problems’, then ‘understanding your illness’
• All seventeen areas of support need were relevant for service users, with at least five people ticking the least common area – ‘personal care’
These findings suggest that this new adapted version of the questions is relevant for mental health service users and could be used in clinical practice.How did we use the findings?
We have used the findings to produce a short booklet that contains the new version of the questions for mental health service users – it is called the “How are you?” booklet. Working with other service users we have developed ways that health care staff can share the booklet with service users to help them identify and discuss their concerns with staff.What next?
We are now working with health care staff to explore how we can make the “How are you?” booklet, and ways of working with it, available for use in practice.REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/YH/0206
Date of REC Opinion
21 Sep 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion